World City Guide

Getting There By Rail

The city has two main railways stations – Lyon Part-Dieu, Place Beraudier, and Lyon Perrache, 10 Cours de Verdun. The stations share roughly equal amounts of the train traffic to and from the city. Both stations have a café, snack bar, ATM, newsagent, tourist information office and a bus link to Lyon-St-Exupéry Airport.

SNCF (tel: (0892) 353 535, for fare and timetable information, reservation and booking; e-mail: webra@sncf.fr; website: www.sncf.fr) is the national rail service provider. The French TGV network is now highly developed, branching out in three main directions – south–east (Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean), Atlantic and north.

National rail enquries should be directed to the SNCF Ligne Vocale hotline (tel: (0891) 676 869), which provides timetable and service information for all domestic and cross-border rail services. The line is available daily 24 hours.

Rail services: A high-speed TGV (Train Grand Vitesse) service leaves Lyon for Paris almost every half an hour (journey time –2 hours), providing 30 services between the cities per day. Direct services are also available to and from Geneva (journey time – 2 hours), Turin (journey time – 4 hours), Montpellier (journey time – 2 hours), Marseille (journey time – 2 hours) and Nantes (journey time – 7 hours).

Transport to the city: There are plenty of buses and taxis available at the railway stations. Both stations are also served by the Métro.