Riding France’s FIRST PRIVATE Intercity Train Along the GORGEOUS French Riviera!
France is slowly but surely privatising its non-high speed routes, with the Nice-Marseille express route being the first to be awarded to a private operator that isn’t SNCF. In this video, we take a look at this service since Transdev took it over, including the brand new Omneo Premium trains and the significant increase in service frequency. Enjoy the video!
Journey details:
Date of travel – July 2025
Operator – Region Sud Zou!/Transdev
Train type – Z59000 “Omneo Premium”
Class of travel – First
Origin – Nice Ville
Destination – Marseille Saint-Charles
Price – see video for details
Journey time – 2 hours, 36 minutes
Distance – 224km/139 miles
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video!
Music from EpidemicSound and is used under license.
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Further information about the Transdev Zou! catering: https://www.transdev.com/en/reference/trains-zou
#zou #transdev #omneopremium #regio2n #alstom #bombardier #sncf #tgv #ter #tripreport #trains #nice #marseille #vlog #france
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:36 Nice Ville
02:22 The Transdev Takeover & The New Trains
04:15 Boarding, Departure & Route Info
06:21 First class review
08:24 Along the French Riviera
12:13 Walkthrough
14:05 Journey Summary, Conclusions & Pricing
15:34 Arrival into Marseille & Outro – Thanks for Watching!
13 Comments
My local operator now ❤
The seats look pretty reasonable, especially for the journey lengths of these services. Do all of the carriages have gap filling steps? it's bizarre to me other companies can manage it but Talgo couldn't with the ICE-L.
I hate the shiny surfaces on newer French trains.
Better than 3 car sets we get on the Bordeaux to Bergerac / Sarlat line
My local express service operator 😅 In all seriousness whilst I was sad to see the old Corail units go, these new Transdev units have been rock solid thus far. Though one of them was recently tragically involved in a fatal level crossing crash along the line and is now parked in Cannes awaiting its front end to be given heavy maintenance repairs after the accident
11:42 A brawl in the middle of the tracks? WTF!
They heard France is switching to Linux so they replace train with zou!do train?
Great video thanks
Do you know there's a new YouTube train channel called Not Just Solo Travel? It makes Great videos, I recommend you to subscribe to the channel and comment him about nice train trips
0:01 That's not exactly true:
– the TER line between Guingamp and Carhaix is operated by CFTA (renamed "Transdev Rail" in 2019)
– the TER line between Salbris and Valençay is operated by CBA (acquired by Keolis in 2000, therefore since then a public operator since Keolis is a public company as well)
For the vending machine, in the same train but in Normandy (Omneo 1) have a Coffee machine on the single deck middle coach
It's not privat, it's paid both by customers and public fund, it's à delegated public service of the Région Sud…..as it was before…. only thée "délégataire" as changed.
15:20 But these fares are only for occasional solo travel:
– A 20€ "ZOU ! Malin" card gives you a 30% discount on all regional buses/trains in PACA during 1 year, a person travelling with you can also benefit from the discount (so a one-way trip is 28.56€, or 57.12€ for 2 people travelling together: cheaper than 2 one-way tickets even factoring the 20€ cost of the card)
– A 60€ "Pass Régional 3 jours" will allow you unlimited trips in the whole PACA région for 3 days, 20€ extra for each person travelling with you, up to 8 additional people (so 80€ for 2 people travelling together, cheaper than 2 one-way tickets)