1

Hitch? Walk? If you can't afford a French train, you can't afford to travel.

2

France has no internal long-distance bus services. On long-distance travel, SNCF (aka the French train service has a monopoly.

3

I confirm: no domestic long distance buses in France. Buses only do regional and municipal services.

Check www.voyages-sncf.com for cheap fares. Click on the Union Jack at the bottom left if you need the English version.

4

SNCF is NOT at all cheap if you just come and buy the ticket; it CAN be done for 20/25 euro in the superfast TGV, ONLY if you book fixed long advance on their website. and yes, NO bus. EUROLs is ONLY allowed to do INTERnational bustraffic due to local monopoly: the unions strive hard for their right to strike any moment. In fact this system applies in about most of the EU

5

The unions don't strive for much in France. Only 8.5% of the workers are unionized, the lowest percentage of any developed country in the world.

The government which owns the SNCF makes sure that it has the monopoly.

You can cross the entire country for 19€ by train if you plan ahead. I think it is completely normal for walk-up fares to be much more expensive.

6

why do you write wrong things ?
SNCF don't have monopoly for road transport at all !
Everybody is allow to create a Bus service for national transport.
But French people don't like travel by bus, so they usually prefer car or train. It's more comfortable and faster. For the price it's expensive, but it's possible to have discount price.
For this reason Bus is not competitive with the train in France.
But sometime some company try to launch Bus services.

Covabus for exemple have Lille - Paris for a good price (cheaper than train)
http://www.covabus.com

For tourist some travel agencies can organise many destination : Paris, Marseilles, Nice, La Rochelles, Mont Saint Michel, etc ...

7

Ha ha, great "new" service immediately suspended for two months as per the Covabus website.

Actually, Eurolines, which has been trying to get authorization to do some domestic bus lines for years finally received permission in western France last month.

These are the domestic lines that exist:

Caen Paris : à partir de 15 € *
Rouen Paris : à partir de 8 € *
Rennes Paris : à partir de 24 € *
Rennes Rouen : à partir de 19 €*
Nantes Paris : à partir de 22 € *
Angers Paris : à partir de 17 € *
Toulouse Narbonne : à partir de 11 € *
Toulouse Perpignan : à partir de 15 € *

They are not really new lines but stops on existing lines where tickets can now be sold. For example, I think I read that the Rennes Paris line is actually the Rennes Bucharest line. Eurolines has applied for about 50 other domestic routes but is still waiting....