City to city
Paris to Lyon by train
Gare de Lyon → Lyon-Part-Dieu
- Fastest
- ≈ 1h 56m
- Typical
- ≈ 1h 59m
- Direct trains
- Yes
- Fewest changes
- 0
- Operators
- SNCF VOYAGEURS, RER, Trenitalia, Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français
Trains link Paris (Gare de Lyon) and Lyon (Lyon-Part-Dieu) in about 1h 56m at best, with no changes needed. The corridor is part of the TGV inOui (427 km, typically 1 h 57 min), one of 1247 routes plotted in the World Train Map atlas.
How long does the train from Paris to Lyon take?
The fastest trains cover Paris to Lyon in about 1h 56m; a typical journey takes around 1h 59m.
Is there a direct train from Paris to Lyon?
Yes: direct trains run between Gare de Lyon and Lyon-Part-Dieu.
Is the train or a flight faster from Paris to Lyon?
Door to door, the train typically wins: about 2h 20m city centre to city centre, against roughly 4h for a typical flight once airport time is counted. The train also emits about 3× less CO₂e, even on conservative official emission factors.
- Train, door to door
- ≈ 2h 20m
- Flight, door to door
- ≈ 4h (est.)
- CO₂e per passenger
- ~17 kg train · ~54 kg plane
Flight time and emissions are transparent estimates, not airline schedules — method, factors and all 109 compared pairs on Train vs plane in Europe.
This corridor in the atlas
- TGV inOui France’s first high-speed line, opened in 1981: the Paris–Lyon route that launched the whole TGV era, now run in under two hours.
- Ouigo SNCF’s low-cost double-decker TGV, launched in 2013 with fares from €10, races Paris to Lyon at up to 300 km/h.
Legendary routes through Paris or Lyon
- Eurostar London → Paris
- TGV inOui Paris → Marseille
- Eurostar (Thalys) Paris → Amsterdam
- Venice Simplon-Orient-Express Paris → Venice
Sleepers too: night trains from Paris.
More trains from Paris
- Paris → Reims ≈ 46 min · direct
- Paris → Lille ≈ 1h 17m · direct
- Paris → Brussels ≈ 1h 22m · direct
- Paris → Rennes ≈ 1h 30m · direct
- Paris → Nancy ≈ 1h 35m · direct
- Paris → Dijon ≈ 1h 38m · direct
More train routes in France · United Kingdom · Belgium.
Journey figures are typical values sampled from public European schedule data; exact times vary by day. Always check the operator when booking.