Paris Metro Tickets

[Thethingswedoforlove]

We are going to Paris for 3 nights/ 4 days next week (wb 19/5). Can anyone help me with the best way to pay for travel around Paris. I have searched mumsnet and the web more generally but I am flummoxed. I don’t know if I need a Navigo card or an app or if I buy carnet of tickets directly to my Apple wallet. There are four of us. All adults. All with Apple phones. Can anyone help me?

Just back from Paris 3 weeks ago. Just download the app onto your phone & top it up as needed. It’s dead simple but there are lots of videos about in on YouTube

In my experience it's not as simple as "Just download the app".

The problem is that, like all public transport systems, it's (a) set up for the locals and (b) infused with historical stuff. In the case of Paris, there's also the turf wars between SNCF (the national rail company, which runs the RER suburban rail lines), RATP (the Paris transport company, which runs the buses and the metro), and a consortium called Île de France Mobilités, which is needed so that everything doesn't grind to a halt when you get to the formal boundaries of the city of Paris. It's at least as complex as TfL in London.

In particular, it helps to be aware that a lot of the branding revolves around the word "Navigo", which was originally a smart card available only to residents on which you load credit and use it to travel around, like Oyster circa 2010. That branding has now leaked into various other parts of the system, which can cause confusion because you don't have a physical Navigo card, you don't need one, and you aren't going to get one, but you are still going to be buying "Navigo tickets".

What worked for me (on Android, but I assume the same apps are available for iPhone) was:

• Download the app called "Île de France Mobilités". Create an account. Connect that account to the app. This will involve quite a bit of faff (accepting all kind of permissions, getting codes from your e-mail, etc).
• When you try to buy "tickets on my phone", you will eventually get to the point where it tells you need another app, called "Mes Tickets Navigo". This is because as well as "Île de France Mobilités" there are other apps that also let you buy Navigo tickets (because of the above-mentioned turf wars). So you need to install that. Note that it does not like things like power-saving mode or being put to sleep in the background.
• Now you can go back to "Île de France Mobilités" and try to buy some tickets. I suggest you start with a single €2.50 Métro/bus ticket.

Basically, "My Navigo Tickets" runs in the background and is the app that talks to the ticket barriers over the NFC (wireless) connection of your phone. "Île de France Mobilités" is the app that you will actually use to plan routes, buy the tickets, etc.

I strongly recommend that you do all of the above steps now, and then again on the day before you travel (obviously without actually re-installing the apps, but do go through the apps to the purchase part and maybe buy another single ticket, just to make sure that the logins work and the cookies are not expired, etc).

When I used this last autumn I found that checking in and out of the ticket barriers always worked OK (the "Mes Tickets Navigo" app is pretty robust and works when there is no data signal, which is still not ubiquitous on the Métro), but "Île de France Mobilités" was sometimes a bit flaky. There were moments when I could buy an airport ticket but not a single, and then 10 minutes later it would work. So buying tickets is probably best done when you're sitting comfortably at a café, and not when you have none and it's raining.

As far as I know the tickets cannot be added to Apple Wallet. I certainly didn't see a way to add them to Google Wallet. That's what the "Mes Tickets Navigo" app is for.

@samarrange thank you so much. @Kittywhiskerton reaklt helpful suggestion of using YouTube. Thank you! I just never think of it. I am too old…..

I managed to add mine to apple wallet, but they didn't always work (perhaps for reasons above). DD insists that you don't even need the app open for it to work, but I always did. It was less stressful than I expected but not as easy to use as an Oyster card (probably was really but I didn't feel it at the time).

@samarrange i wonder if it is different for iPhone users. I seem to have been able to do it all via the first app and it def was able to add it to the Apple wallet…. Thank you so much! I bought one ticket and it worked so I feel more confident to get a 3 day pass now

The mes tickets navigo doesn’t seem to be available in the iPhone App Store either

I used to live in France, speak French and lament the demise of the paper ticket carnet. The app was a challenge for me and it beat me hands down.

l find it easier to buy the Navigo card at a Metro ticket machine and load it with a number of journeys. You can then top up as and when.

this was a few years ago, but I recall we bought a pass from a little booth in one of the metro stations and you can then go and top the pass up with 10 journeys or whatever you think you need.

As in many cities staff in little booths have been superseded by more machines. If you do find a human being to speak to they are likely to tell you to use the machine.

We did this too - we bought a Navigo ticket each from a machine, and we just ripped these up using a machine when needed.

/ topped 😄

@StarlightLady Ah, that’s a shame but yes, the machines are all around too to do it. Think it was about 3 or 4 years ago when I went.

So love mumsnet. Thank you everyone for your help

To be honest when we went we just went to a station with a manned ticket office and bought the amount of tickets we would need for the next couple of journeys and then bought more in the same way when we needed to. We don't speak French and relied on sign language and the numbers we remembered from school :D

IIRC it's just one ticket = one journey, it's not graduated prices. Or we stayed within an area where that was true anyway.

Then I guess they have got it work with Apple Wallet and not with Google yet. Seems like a win for iPhone.

Just back from a study trip to Paris. We with the help of our lecturer bought a weeks physical card, but you need a photo. That was a nightmare! We bought it through a ticket office. I had got there a few days early and bought tickets when I needed them.

I was on here three weeks ago moaning about it, buying tickets for kids on an adult phone pretty much defeated us (finally got sorted to a point by buying them a navigo card, def as an adult you don’t need to do this)

paper tickets are still valid but can’t be bought almost anywhere. Almost all stations seemed to be unmanned.

however via the aforementioned app (Bonjour is another one and the one I used) if every adult is sorting themselves out individually it’s basically ok. I recall a full day travelcard costing €12. Four trips a day and travelcard is better value. What you cannot do is just touch in and out with contactless like you can London. Honestly it’s very confusing for visitors. And I speak French and used to live there.

Actual tickets were phased out earlier this year. Almost all the ticket offices are closed.

How do the barriers work if you can’t tap in and out?

We used Apple wallet, plus sign, travel card and added the Navigo ticket we wanted just before we went underground to the station, and it was all fine on the Metro for single journeys. Had trouble going out to the airport though, couldn’t get out the gates despite buying the specific airport ticket.

Oh right, sorry. I went in October and had thought that was fairly recent.

We went last summer for 4 days. I think I was so confused before we went we ended up just going to the main ticket office at the gare du Nord when we got off the Eurostar. We got a 4 day pass for the whole network including the train out to Disney land. It was probably the best value thing we bought the whole time we were there, about 48 EUR each. From memory it was a card, a bit like an oyster, which we tapped to get through the barriers. If you lost it you were buggered though.

You open them by either tapping your phone or your Navigo card, or inserting a paper ticket.

We went in February, didn’t bother with the app we just bought re-loadable cards when we arrived (I think €2 each), then topped up with the number of journeys as needed (one journey counts as any combination of trains taken within one hour). Most metro stations have automatic ticket machines where you can load up the cards.
They have simplified the prices from this January so every journey is now €2.50 (half price for kids), apart from journeys to and from the airports (I think that was €13 each but still cheaper than a taxi).
Can’t remember what age counts for the kids rate but it’s either under 11 or 12 because our 10 year old qualified and 13 year old didn’t.

Bloody hell I so needed this thread! I went to Paris recently and we could not work it out at all. Got shouted at by the Metro staff until a helpful passenger intervened. It is ridiculously complicated for a city that has a huge volume of international tourists.