Rail Strikes

Ouch. That doesn't sound good at all. Wonder if it'll really happen?

Boo. This would throw a monkey into my wrench. I need a train from Paris to Brive on a Wednesday. Thanks for the heads-up.

It does throw some unexpected hurdles in my day trip planning for later this month, but....

I read this earlier and confirmed my long haul TGV Lyria doesn't fall on a strike day. But my day trip to Versaille does. I really dislike visiting France sometimes.

So what does one do if caught in this?

So what does one do if caught in this?

It depends on a lot of things, including how many trains on the same line are still running, and what kinds of alternate transport are available. We arrived in France on March 31, the day of the national general strikes, which hit transportation particularly hard. We arrived at CDG and had a TGV reservation from Paris to Bordeaux. The day before our arrival I received an email from SNCF informing me that our train had been cancelled, but we could use our tickets on any other Paris-Bordeaux train that day or the next (most were still running), although we were not guaranteed a seat. Then we had the issue of getting to Gare Montparnasse from CDG in light of the RER and Metro strike disruptions. When we exited the terminal we saw an Air France bus, so we took it. We wound up getting an even earlier train than our cancelled one, and there were plenty of seats.

I am in Paris and need to be at CDG for 7:30 am. From your experience, do some RER B trains still run and if so, might they stop mid way? I am thinking of reserving a taxi but wonder if they will be reliable as sometimes others slow down in support of other workers? Thoughts?

It looks like the strikes in March affected Eurostar trips (20% cancelled)... Does anyone have any guess as to whether these strikes will have a similar impact on Eurostar (from London to Paris, if it makes a difference)?

Robert,
First of all, thanks for posting this news!

I have some questions about your comment above:

The day before our arrival I received an email from SNCF informing me that our train had been cancelled, but we could use our tickets on any other Paris-Bordeaux train that day or the next (most were still running), although we were not guaranteed a seat. Then we had the issue of getting to Gare Montparnasse from CDG in light of the RER and Metro strike disruptions. When we exited the terminal we saw an Air France bus, so we took it. We wound up getting an even earlier train than our cancelled one, and there were plenty of seats.

We will be in France in less than 2 weeks time & I've purchased train tickets with 2 dates that fall on Wednesdays.
When I purchased our tickets through the SNCF site, I registered, so I presume I will be notified via email, if our trains get cancelled, right?

Can you please give more details as to what you did once you arrived at Gare Montparnasse?

• Did you go to the ticket counter to talk with SNCF staff regarding
  your cancelled train?

• Did they issue you new tickets?

• What if my tickets were purchased at a discounted rate?

Thanks again!

Priscilla

Priscilla, we didn't do anything but get on the train. The email I got said the tickets were valid on any train on the same route that day or the next, so we just got on the next train after we arrived. As it turned out, no one ever checked tickets during the 3 1/4 hour trip. And our tickets were discounted tickets. Also, I bought the tickets through Captain Train, but I'm pretty sure the email came directly from SNCF.

This may sound like a naive question, but do these strikes also involve the Paris Metro?

Jenny, it depends on what unions join the strikes. The one on March 31, which affected my travel, was called as a national, general strike, and both the Metro and RER were affected to some degree, in addition to SNCF. I used the following web site (in French) to try and keep up to date on the strike situation: http://www.cestlagreve.fr/

Robert, thanks for that link as well.

Something I didn't know until recently is that if you use Chrome as your browser it has a translate function on it and will translate the whole page. Sometimes it is awkwardly translated but it is good enough to get the gist of what is going on.

Thanks, Robert. I'll keep that link handy. Thankfully, my husband speaks French!

Thanks Robert!
Hopefully they will resolve their issues & the strike won't continue week after week...

I just saw this. Thanks for posting. We will be in France next week, but thankfully our train trips are on Monday and Friday. My friend is there now and this impacts her train to Avignon. Yikes!

I am planning on taking the Thalys from Paris to Amsterdam on Wednesday 5/25. Will it be effected by the strike? Who would know?

And the weekly strikes begin.

Wednesday's rail strikes, set to run until Friday morning, reduced
high-speed and inter-city services by 40 to 50 percent, also heavily
disrupting local and suburban commuter lines, the SNCF state railway
company said.

To find out if your train is running, go to the French rail site http://www.sncf.com/en/passengers, the Thalys site at https://www.thalys.com/be/en/traffic-info, or Eurostar's site for those trains.