How can I search for French trains (only – no buses)?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 29 Jul, 2023
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The French railway network has suffered from underinvestment during the previous years and is now undergoing extensive repairs. Logically, when track repairs happen, depending on the cases, trains are delayed in the schedules or bus bridges are set up.
In your case, the line used is a “small” regional line, with no other through traffic. This line begins at Toulouse, then forks off the westwards line to Bayonne, continuing all the way to Auch which is a dead-end station.
From the forking point to Auch, it is a single-track railway without overhead wires. Services are done using small diesel units.
According to the screenshot, the 4:15pm option happens when part of the line is likely closed for scheduled repairs or maintenance, or there is no train already arrived at Auch ready to go back to Toulouse at that time of the day. Railway scheduling is a science on its own, especially on a single-track line where trains in opposite directions have to cross at designated places!
The same situation can happen on some similar dead-end lines.
There is no option to exclude the bus bridge options AFAIK. Just review the other times and pick the one that suits you!
Unfortunately, on some connections where railroads don’t exist or are under repair, or when traffic would be too expensive by train, SNCF operates buses.
This is indicated on paper-based timetables but is not always transmitted to databases or taken into account by applications using these databases.
I am a bit surprised that www.voyages-sncf.com does not help you. There are two different tabs for trains and buses. If you choose the train tab, you get train results…
It may be that, if there is no train that reaches your destination, he proposes as an alternative a bus. But this is not the case when train is possible.
EDIT: it seems that for your travel, he indeed proposes bus, even if it is the train tab. It is probably because of a combination of short travel, small town (Auch), in order to offer more choices. And even on my version of the interface (french), no way to disable bus offer.
For longer travels, between larger cities, he should not offer you bus options.
As far as I know, Capitaine Train does train-only searches across France (and a few other countries like UK, Germany etc.).
It probably has the best UX/UI of any transport tickets purchase website too, so it should be quite pleasant to use.
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For searching train schedules across Europe in general, and in particular for such tricky requests, I always rely on the German Railways, the Deutsche Bahn.
I tried some request for a trip between Lyon and Grenoble. The standard search includes buses and there is a late bus from Lyon to Grenoble, leaving at 11.14 PM.
Now if you start a new search with more options, in the Connections category, you can choose the means of transport you accept. You can untick the bus box like in the screenshot and the result of the search will exclude the buses.
Unfortunately this is only for the schedules. If you want to buy the tickets you will have to go on voyages-sncf.com and compare the options.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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