[johnchristopher]

> Meanwhile in the developed world: TGV takes 2 hours from Lyon to Paris, google maps claims a car takes 4 hours.

Yeah. But try going anywhere around Lyon[0] after the nice TGV trip from Paris[0] and welcome to connection hell.

[0] Or any other TGV connected cities.

[kken]

What is the problem? Lyon has a fully developed system of trams and subways. It's directly connected to the TGV train station.

http://www.tcl.fr/var/tcl/storage/original/application/b8cb6...

[Tpt]

> Yeah. But try going anywhere around Lyon[0] after the nice TGV trip from Paris[0] and welcome to connection hell.

Public transportations are often quite good in European cities. When I was in college, it tooked me sligtly more than 3 hours door to door to go from my parents home in a Paris suburb to my University dorm in Lyon. It's not so bad for a trip of nearly 450km.

[johnchristopher]

People, french people.

I love traveling by train, especially in quiet high speed ones such as TGV, Thalys or ICE.

However half the year I am regularly traveling through France for work from one city to another. I love the train, I enjoy it much better than air travel but the time and the stress lost due to running around with a carriage trying to decipher the connections that's going to take me to the tech zoning is... well stressful and time consuming.

I stand by my point: train station to train station is nice but door-to-door ? That's a much less smoother ride.

[Doctor_Fegg]

Really? We got the TER from Lyon to Saint Etienne last year, connecting out of a TGV. It was fine, and more reliable than the jam-prone parallel road.

[azernik]

The central train station sits right on top of a metro station, a tram line (for longer-distance), and several bus lines. "Connection hell" is not how I would describe the process of switching from one to the other in European city centers.

[yardie]

What about? I’ve made the trip many times. There was nothing hellish about it. Same for Sens, Lille, Montpellier, and Nice.