Tiphaine Dubuard / Photo credits: FIORA GARENZI / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 06:19, March 9, 2024, modified at 06:20, March 9, 2024

At SNCF, the shorter your journey, the more expensive per kilometer.

If the kilometer is on average 19 cents, all duration combined, prices soar for journeys of less than an hour.

This is the conclusion of a study published by the consumer association UFC Que Choisir.

The shorter your journey, the more expensive per kilometer.

23 cents on average per kilometer for journeys of less than an hour compared to 16 for journeys of more than four hours.

These are the prices applied by SNCF in 2024.

On certain journeys, the price per kilometer varies from one to three times

Differences which are mainly explained by the weight of fixed costs which weighs on the tickets, analyzes Arnaud de Blauwe, manager at the UFC: "Fixed costs are easier to amortize over a long distance. When I talk about fixed cost , these are the equipment, personnel and tolls that the SNCF must pay to use its own network. Tolls represent approximately 40% of the price of a ticket according to the SNCF.

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More surprisingly, for journeys of similar duration, the price per kilometer can vary by a factor of three.

Example with the Dax-Pau and the Paris-Reims, both last around three quarters of an hour.

But in terms of price, the kilometer goes from 10 to 33 cents.

"The Paris-Reims line is high speed while DAX and Pau, the TGV does not run on a high speed line. The use of the high speed line is penalizing for the price per kilometer, because the price is much more heavy than on so-called secondary lines.

And for travelers, the bill should continue to rise.

A few days ago, the SNCF announced a new increase of 2.6% in its train tickets.