You can ride on trains in Northern France for just 1 euro

The country is trying to make public transport more appealing but it’s taking shy steps

The French rail operator SNCF has put on the market thousands of tickets priced at just 1 euro for the summer. The fares are available for the regional service TER Hauts-de-France in Northern France.

The name of the programme is L’ÉTER – a play on the name of the service and the French word for summer (l'été). The specially priced tickets are available for purchase at the ticket counters in train stations in the region, as well as on the SNCF website.

The fares at the 1-euro price are valid only for journeys between 1 and 27 August. For those wondering where Hauts-de-France is located – roughly think about the entire region north of Paris to the border of Belgium. The region also counts with a coastline on the English Channel linking the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, so it’s also an ideal off-the-beaten-track beach destination away from the crowds and heatwaves of the Mediterranean.

Hauts-de-France is also home to the European border metropolis of Lille, as well as the historical cities of Amiens and Arras, which retain a Flemish flavour in architecture and lifestyle. For history buffs, the region has monuments preserving the memory and scars from World War I, whose trench-based battles largely took place there.

Youth pass for intercity buses and trains is in the works

The announced railway travel discounts are financed by the regional council. Similar ones also apply in Occitanie in Southern France but only to people under 26 years of age and for rides between 14 July and 15 August.

According to Euronews, by next summer, the French government plans to introduce a single pass for all Intercités trains, TER trains and buses. That would be a step in the right direction, although compared to Germany’s experiments with discounted national train passes, the French plans appear relatively indecisive.

Intercités trains carry around 12 million people a year, according to the transport ministry. France’s high-speed TGV trains are much more used; however, they wouldn’t be accessible to the eventual youth pass holders.