French daily Le Figaro asked train reservation site SNCF Connect to rank the most reserved journeys in 2022 on major national routes and regional lines. SNCF Connect calculated this based on tickets bought on their website and app.

Unsurprisingly, the ten most frequently booked national journeys all involve Paris, the centre of the French rail network.

Paris <> Lyon tops the national list, with the premium high-speed TGV inOui and more affordable Ouigo trains offering a total of 22 return journeys a day on that route.

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Trenitalia’s Frecciarossa has also been running five return journeys a day on this line since December 2021. And Spain’s Renfe hopes to start serving Paris next year, with an extension of its new Lyon-Barcelona route.

In second place is Paris < > Lille, followed by Paris < > Bordeaux, Paris < > Nantes, Paris < > Marseille, Paris < > Rennes, Paris < > Strasbourg, Paris < > Toulouse, Paris < > Avignon, and, in tenth place, Paris < > Montpellier.

As for the regional TER trains, the Angers < > Nantes route is the most used, according to the SNCF Connect data. Every day around 50 regional trains make this 40-minute journey both ways.

Lyon also features again several times – it’s the departure and destination station for three particularly highly frequented routes, those from/to Saint-Etienne, Grenoble and Valence. Again, not surprising given that Lyon’s main station, Lyon Part-Dieu, is the busiest outside of Ile-de-France. 

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The rest of the routes in the regional top ten are as follows: in second place is Lyon < > Saint-Etienne, followed by Grenoble < > Lyon, Colmar < > Strasbourg, Montpellier < > Nimes, Lyon < > Valence, Mulhouse < > Strasbourg, Metz < > Nancy-Ville, Montauban Ville Bourbon < > Toulouse and, in tenth position, Nantes < > Saint-Nazaire. 

So if you’re looking to travel by train this summer, these are the routes to book in advance, if you want to make sure you get a seat or the ones to avoid if you don’t fancy being stuck on a busy train!