InsideTransit

There are 2 major international airports around Paris: Charles de Gaulle (a.k.a. Roissy) located north-east of the city, and Orly, located south of the city. You can get to either airport either by taxi or Air France coach for € 15 to € 70, depending on where you start from and where you’re going.

Both airports are run by the Paris airport authority. An excellent image outlining all your options is available here (french only). What follows gives you a general overview of how to get from/to the airports by public transit.

Charles de Gaulle
… by bus
There is a special shuttle (city bus) called RoissyBus which will take you from the CDG airport to the Opéra métro stop for € 9.40. There are also two regular bus routes during the day (#350 from Gare de l’est, and #351 from the Nation métro station), and two night routes (#N140, and N143). Both buses will cost you three (3) zone-1 tickets.

… by train
The quickest and most relaxing way (in my opinion) to get from/to the airport: the RER B line (€ 8,70). Keep in mind this is a commuter-train, so if you are travelling during the work-week the train will be quite full with commuters and there is not much room for luggage.

A quick note on taking the train from CDG:

* There are many automatic ticket dispensers at the CDG train terminal, however North-American credit cards are notoriously difficult to use with these dispensers if they do not have the chip technology (if you have American Express, forget about it)
* If you have to buy your ticket from an employee, the lines are impossibly long. If you’re lucky enough to know someone who lives in Paris, the best thing to do is have them send you a Paris-CDG ticket in the mail before your trip. It will save you a lot of time.

Orly
… by bus
Similar to CDG, there is a bus service (OrlyBus) to take you from the Denfert Rochereau station to the Orly airport (€ 6.60). You can also opt for regular city-bus service from/to the airport with bus routes 183, 285, and 292. Night bus: N31, and N131

… by train
Both the RER ‘B’ and ‘C’ lines pass close to the Orly airport, but you will need to take a shuttle to complete your journey. Use the OrlyVal driverless light rail trainsit line to get you from the airport to the Antony train stop (RER ‘B’) for €10.25, or the “Paris by train shuttle” to get you from the airport to the Pont de Rungix Aéroport d’Orly train station (RER ‘C’).

Summary:
In my opinion, getting to Paris from an airport by train is the best way to go, but there is one disadvantage: all the stairs in the Paris métro! Once you get to Paris by train, you might want to complete your journey by taxi if you have a lot of luggage with you.

If you are interested in riding the Paris Metro subway system, here’s a listing of all of the current fares as of April 12, 2011. We’ve also created a how-to Paris Metro guide with more information about riding the system.
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Before we get started with our how-to ride the Paris Metro and commuter rail, a little geography: the city of Paris is delimited by a ring road called the Boulevard Périphérique. The city is located in a region called “Ile-de-France”. When you see a reference to the “Ile-de-France”, it is referring to the city of Paris and its surrounding suburbs.

The Paris transit system is made up of four (4) types of transportation: métro (subway), bus, train and tram, and is run primarily by the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (ratp.fr), which has a rich amount of information in English on their website for tourists.

The Ile-de-France is divided into 6 transit zones with the city of Paris being zone 1. These zones apply only to the commuter train network discussed further on.

The Metro
The Paris metro system is made up of 14 underground and above-ground subway lines numbered 1 through 14 with two lines assigned the suffix “bis” indicating that they were at one time part of the main subway line, but now only serve as an extension to a specific line. As these “bis” lines are outside of tourist areas you won’t need to worry about them.

As is common with most subway systems, the direction of the train is indicated by the name of the last stop in that direction. Two of the metro lines (7, and 13) branches so they will have two terminuses, but, again, this is outside the tourist region, and so you will not need to worry about it.

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“We were treated like animals”, said one passenger stuck on a Eurostar train. Passengers stranded for hours – some calling it a “death trap”. The BBC video shows passengers who made it out of the tunnels who have some choice words for the Eurostar management.

The Eurostar trains broke down as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer tunnel en route to London.

John Keefe from Eurotunnel, the operator of the Channel Tunnel, said the situation was “absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented”.

“There’s never actually been an evacuation of a Eurostar train in the 15 years that the tunnel has been opened and last night we evacuated two whole trains to get people off.”

The BBC notes that five trains were stuck in the tunnel. Apparently it was freezing in the carriages and very little water or food was provided to the passengers. They continue, “Director of communications Mary Walsh said the company was “extremely sorry” for the delays and refunds would be available for all those affected.”

I’ve been on the Eurostar once in 2006 and overall enjoyed the trip.

Everyone always wants trains to go faster. Here in the northeast U.S, we have “Acela” which is supposed to be very fast but it seems to get to about 125 miles per hour max for about 5 minutes. Below is a video from France that shows a test train that hits an amazing 574.8 kilometres per hour. For us Americans, that’s over 350 miles per hour. Or nearly three times as fast as the fastest thing we’ve got here.

Even if you don’t care about trains, you should still watch the video. It’s put together like a movie promo and gets your heart going as they continue to speed up.

I sure hope one day in my lifetime we see trains like this around the world.