Over the holidays, France’s largest train service SNCF quietly announced a new service, named porte à porte, which allows travelers to book not only their train ticket, but a taxi to and from the departure and arrival train station. The service takes into account expected delays, and assures passengers that taxi’s will wait in the case of a delayed train, and that the cost will be fixed in advance. In order to use the service, you simply type in the reservation number for your train (for now, you have to already have booked a ticket, otherwise you will be redirected to the main site). Lastly, the service is only available at the Aix en Provence train station for now – hopefully they’ll roll it out in a train station I frequent soon.
Prices start at 11,90€ for distances under 5KM (~3 Miles), and jump to 19,90€ for distances between 5-10KM, and continue to rise at this rate. The service, available between 7:00AM and 7:00PM Monday through Saturday. Since the service is being beta tested in Aix en Provence, I assume it’s being done through a partnership with a local taxi service, like G7; nonetheless, if this spreads across France, this could potentially add SNCF to the private driver battle going on in France. Driving services like Uber and SnapCar do a lot of there business through Airport arrivals and other high-traffic arrival points, where it is difficult to get a taxi.