Why I am in love with the Transilien Network

I will try to summarize points I have raised throughout www.ChrisGreaves.com/Tripping/Europe/Paris and www.ChrisGreaves.com/Tripping/Europe/Poissy

You may find it handy to have a copy of a map of the Transilien network handy. You can download a 30 MB copy of Transilien_Île-de-France_map.jpg.

Prices

In September 2016 at CDG airport I bought a one-month Navigo Pass, regular fare, covering all five zones, for €73, or about $110 (Canadian) at the time. That gave me unlimited travel on any public transit vehicle in the Ilê de France for a month. I was in the Ilê de France for three weeks.

In September 2016 I could have bought a Toronto Transit Commission one-month pass, regular fare, for $144. That would have given me unlimited travel anywhere in Toronto, south of Steeles Avenue.

Area of Île de France: about 12,000 square kilometres.

Area of Toronto: 630 square kilometres, or about 5% of the Ilê de France.

Area of the Greater Toronto Area: 7,124 square kilometres, or about 60% of the Ilê de France.

No contest.

Coverage

The Ilê de France is the circled area.

If I’ve done my sums right, and bearing in mind that Toronto lies on a lake, we can make a semi-circle of about 12,000 square kilometres with a 100 Km radius semi-circle.

One hundred kilometres takes us as far east as Cobourg and as far west as Kitchener and as far north as Orillia.

I have marked the $144 limit of the Toronto Transit Commission roughly in Purple; that is Toronto City.

Prices

Of course, it’s not really fair to compare monthly prices. Toronto will soon be using the ill-fated Presto card. Every other city in and beyond the Greater Toronto Area has been using the Presto card for yonks.

You can buy a monthly fare on the Presto card, but only between two places – for example, between where you live and where you work. You cannot “buy” a card that gives you unlimited travel across a significant chunk of Southern Ontario.

Ontario’s Presto card just can’t compete or compare with the Navigo Card.

Prices

Of course, it’s not really fair to compare monthly prices. Toronto will soon be using the ill-fated Presto card; every other city in and beyond the Greater Toronto Area has been using the Presto card for yonks.

Every time you use/tap/swipe your Presto card, you hear “Ka-Ching” as money is taken off the balance stored on your card. You must take steps to top up your card manually or automatically, otherwise you can find yourself wanting to get on the GO train at Clarkson late at night with no money on your card.

That can’t happen to you with Navigo. You make that one payment and you are good to go, anywhere, any time, 24-hours per day, every day of the month.

Ontario’s Presto card just can’t compete or compare with the Navigo Card.

Seamless

My Navigo card ($110) is used for every vehicle – subway train, Paris bus, tram, RER train, SNCF/RER train, suburban buses, suburban express buses – one card (that is, one ticket) for everything, for every public transit system vehicle. Regardless of the number of wheels.

My MetroPass ($144) can be used ONLY on Toronto Transit Commission buses, subway trains and streetcars in the city of Toronto. Once I reach Mississauga, Brampton, York Region or Durham Region, cities which border on Toronto, I must hop off the Toronto Transit Commission vehicle and pay another fare to board a neighbouring system.

Fast

The Transilien system is FAST. Check out the timetables. No trip on the Transilien train system is more than sixty minutes from Paris.

Most lines are split into two parts, a milk-run services the part closest to Paris, say, Paris to Massy-Palaiseau, 60 minutes from Paris. Behind that train is a second train that runs non-stop to Massy-Palaiseau, roughly twenty minutes, and then is a milk-run from Massy-Palaiseau to the terminus at Saint Remy les Chevreuse, 60 minutes from Paris.

My Poissy description points out that RER trains sets run from Poissy into and out of Paris (It’s known as “Ligne A” in the system), and then SNCF/RER train sets run from St Lazare with none-stop or one-stop service as far as Poissy, and then a milk-run for the rest of the trip to Mantes la Jolie.

Other examples abound.

Choice

The Transilien rail network offers a choice of routes.

How many different routes snake from Cergy-Pontoise towards Paris? From Versailles? From Mantes-La-Jolie?

Now, how many different routes are there from Barrie? From Kitchener? From Oshawa?

(Yes, I know, I know, “It’s not fair to compare Toronto to London or Paris. They are bigger than us, and they’ve been at it longer”. I’ll dismiss that myth a little later on)

Service Times

The Transilien rail network runs in BOTH directions from before 6 a.m. until after midnight. Both directions. Eighteen hours a day.

There is only ONE train that runs from Kitchener into Toronto and it runs in in the morning.

There is only ONE train that runs out to Kitchener from Toronto and it runs in in the evening.

There are but two trains a day for Kitchener. Actually, it’s the same set of coaches. You can park your chewing-gum under the seat in the morning and reclaim it for the trip home.

Kitchener is a city, part of a three-city agglomeration Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge. There is no train service at all to Kitchener, except that one train taking The Workers back home.

Service Frequencies

On the Transilien network, the most IN-frequent service is hourly, and it is at a fixed time. If you travel to Provins and notice as you leave the station that the next train to Paris leaves at 11:43, then you know that trains will leave at 12:43, 13:43, 14:43 and so on until midnight, at least.

RER trains run at anything from thirty down to less than two minute intervals. It is said that Parisians are getting used to seeing the next train snake into the platform as the previous train can still be seen snaking out of the tunnel.

I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that one could ever cease to marvel at a system that is almost a people-moving conveyer-belt.

My Poissy description points out that in the middle of the afternoon (not peak-hour, but slack-hour) RER trains service Maisons-Laffitte every ten minutes. That means TWO trains every ten minutes – one train heading into Paris, one heading out from Paris.

Toronto thinks it became world-class when it upped service on the Lakeshore Corridor to every 30 minutes.

Service Speed

The Transilien RER and RER/SNCF trains are all-electric. Ontario’s GO trains are diesel electric.

The RER trains have an acceleration out of stations that is, my estimate, double that of GO trains. I suspect this is due to the efficiency of using an electric motor, rather than using a diesel motor to drive a generator to create an electric current to drive an electric motor. (An electric motor can be adapted to feed energy back into the system as part of the braking mechanism)

The end result is that travel time between stations on the RER trains is significantly less than the time between stations (of comparable distance) on the GO lines.

As an aside, one of the excuses for NOT electrifying the GO lines is the age of Union Station. I’ll dismiss that myth a little later on.

Quantity of Routes

The Paris Metro system has fourteen lines. The fourteenth and latest line is a high-speed cross-city DRIVERLESS TRAIN. Check it out.

The RER system has sixteen lines. Most of these lines have multiple terminuses. Ligne A, as an example, has terminal stations at St Germaine en Laye, Poissy, and Cergy in the west, and Marne la Valée and Boissy-St-Legér in the east, so you can think of this as five lines which share a common track through the centre of Paris. Rinse and repeat for most of the other fifteen RER lines.

Toronto has three “subway” lines and six GO lines (Well, OK seven GO lines if you want to cheat and treat the Lakeshore East as a separate line from the Lakeshore West line). Toronto also has the ill-fated Union-Pearson express, which doesn’t actually go to Union Station, but to a stray fenced-off platform on the other side of York Street. It is a full five-minute trek with suitcases, bundle-buggies and small children to the Toronto Transit Commission gates or the GO train facilities. Ten minutes to the GO buses.

Central Bus Route Numbers

Most buses within Paris follow a logical numbering system with a two-digit route number.

Buses which terminate at Montparnasse are the 9x series. You want to hop on a bus and go back to your hotel in Montparnasse? Look for a 91, 92, 93 and so on no matter where you are.

Gare St Lazare? 2x.

Gares du Nord and Est? 3x and 4x.

Buses with route numbers ending in eight are Porte d’Orleans, hence 28, 38, 68 and so on. The 38 of course connects Gares du Nord & Est with Porte d’Orleans.

Buses with route numbers ending in two are Porte St Cloud (nice rhyme there!) hence 22, 42, 52, 62 and 72.

In Toronto, a city that is laid out in a rectangular manner, you’d think by now we would have mimicked the US highway system with even numbered routes running east-west and odd-numbered routes running north-south. Low numbers in the south and west, high numbers in the north and east.

Nope!

Kipling Subway Station is served by the 44, 45, 49, 111, 112, 123 – go figure!

Streetcars are all numbered in the five-hundred series – 501, 504, 505, 506, 512 and so on, although I have never needed to observe the route number at close range to know that I am staring at a streetcar. For one thing, they run on steel rails, not at all like buses.

Suburban Bus Route Terminals

I can’t guarantee this, but I suspect that all suburban buses terminate at a Transilien rail station. This makes sense, because you ride the train to get out of Paris, then hop off the train and hop onto a bus to complete your journey.

For the bus-happy tourist (me!) this has the advantage that if I am affected by fatigue towards the end of the day, my bus will pass THROUGH one or more RER stations and will end up AT an RER station, any one of which stations will provide me with a no-need-to-think super-fast way to get home.

Ontario GO buses may well end up at a GO train station; it’s just that there won’t be any train service in towards Toronto until seven o’clock tomorrow morning.

As an aside, did you know that you cannot use a GO bus to spend a day in Bolton? You can head out for lunch and come back right after lunch, but forget about doing a full day’s work there. Rent a car for the day, is my advice.

No Wait! There’s More!

But you get the idea. The Transilien system is well thought out. I have the impression that management actually thinks about the system, instead of dropping a make-shift sub-system into place.

In all cases – Ilê de France and Ontario – I have found without exception that the ground staff are excellent – helpful, courteous, and are Captains of their ship. I can recount many instances of bus drivers bending the rules to help me on my way.

I suspect that the problems are all at the management level.

Oh yes!

Myth (1) It’s not fair to compare Toronto to London or Paris. They are bigger than us, and they’ve been at it longer

This myth is easy to dispel. The cities of Mississauga and Brampton, adjacent to Toronto, are each smaller and younger than Toronto, but have better transit systems.

All cities – except Toronto – have a two-hour transfer. You pay your fare, receive a transfer, and can ride the bus system up to the time that two hours has passed since you boarded the first bus. In Toronto you pay a fare to go to the library, and then you pay another fare to get home.

Mississauga (and Brampton and Oakville and ...) take the approach “We are here to help you to visit the library” or “We are here to help you do your grocery shopping”.

Toronto’s attitude seems to be “Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain these buses?!!???”

Myth (2) It’s not fair to compare Toronto to London or Paris. They are bigger than us, and they’ve been at it longer

I lived for eleven years on Bloor Street, west of Kipling subway, on the 49B bus route in Toronto.

At the Toronto Transit Commission bus stop I could flag down a Mississauga bus, pay my (Mississauga) fare, receive a two-hour transfer and ride to Square One in Mississauga, do my grocery shopping and ride home again. One fare, two buses, five bags of groceries.

At the Toronto Transit Commission bus stop I could flag down a Toronto bus, pay my fare, receive a one-trip transfer and ride to the East Mall, hop off the bus, cross the busy street, wait for a 111 East Mall bus, and ride to Cloverdale Mall, do my grocery shopping and pay a second fare, and use two buses to ride home again. Two fares, four buses, five bags of groceries.

Guess which city got my grocery business.

Further I discovered that Brampton buses honored the Mississauga transfers and vice-versa, so I could board a Mississauga bus outside my home in Toronto, and with one Mississauga fare, make my way to Bramalea Town Centre in Brampton.