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Intercity coach services in France
Foreign
visitors are sometimes surprised to learn that France - unlike the UK,
the USA, Spain or many other countries - does not have a coordinated
intercity express bus or coach network.
This is not to say that there are no bus or coach services in
France; international services with destinations in France are run by a
number of companies, the most important of these being Eurolines, which
links a number of towns and cities in France with major cities in other
European countries. From the UK, details are available on the National
Express website.
Within France, coach services tend to exist only on a regional level;
most French cities have an "autogare" or a "gare routière" -
a coach station - with regular services within the region, and
sometimes further afield. Bus services most frequently cover routes for
which there is no train service, and are sometimes run by the SNCF, the
French railway operator. These services appear in the railway timetable.
One region with good and extensive intercity coach services is
the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur
(PACA) region, with routes linking Marseilles, Avignon,
Grenoble, Nice, Briancon and other cities. Further information on
services in this region is available on Infociao website.
Links to services in other regions can be found on the France-week-end.com
website, though this is in French and the information is not always
very easy to find.
The reason for the lack of intercity coach services in France is not
hard to explain; it is simply that the train services are generally
good, fast, and not expensive; and with all sorts of discounts
available for frequent travellers, over-60's, couples, families and
students, people use the trains.
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