The Rhone Express
The over priced airport link in Lyon.
This service does not warranty fare of €17. My only reason for taking it was due to the connecting bus being over half an hour late and me not wanting to miss my Ouigo train to Peripignan as a result.
This is fundamentally a tram line. Portion of it’s tracks are used by other tram lines as well. The tram is not automated. However, it does have a different colour scheme and luggage racks in tram. The tram also seems to reach speeds of upto a 100 kM/hr. But with all of those things does it actually warrant a price which is around 8 times the price of a regular bus/tram/train ticket which is €2.10? In other countries and cities especially in Spain and in Catalan the €5.00 airport surcharge for rail based vehicles is more reasonable.
It took around 22 minutes for the tram to head from Vaulx-en-Velin La Soie to EXP Airport/ TGV Station. There are many different tickets available for purchase for the different types of commutes which I find unnecessary. If many people had known the cost for buying the ticket for a train connection was €10.90 from their website. This is not a commercial operation. It is not the TGV or Ouigo which is a partial commercial operation. It basically just shuttles people from one part of the city to the other.
What made it worse was the fact that I had to pay €2.10 to get to that stop from Part Dieu. That is where the service is actually supposed to start from. They should have reduced the far by a couple of € due to the inconvenience.
Buying a ticket on their machine was a pain to say the least. It was almost as painful as buying a ticket on a Zou machine in Cote d’Azure. The mouse and cursor was not very responsive. This is where simple and straightforward technology employed by Nice works better. One or two passengers on the trip were simply unable to buy a ticket due to the length of time it took to select the type of ticket.
My solution for this whole operation would be these options
Remove the ticket machines from the stations. Install the ticket machines on board the trains in order for people not to be delayed while buying the tickets
Use a contactless open payment method on board trams with the specific fare of €5.00. This has been implemented in Dijon. Why would that not work here? Same technology is apparently used in on the Trams run by Sytral Mobilités in Lyon. i.e. in the same city.
I unfortunately did not have the fortune of spending a couple of weeks in the city. If I had I may have noticed a couple of other dependencies in the way things are run. This service is in my opinion is a rip off for both customer and the “tax payer”. Based upon the loose reading that I have done on the topic, it seems to be the case of the poor subsidising the rich.