Paris to Lyon by train

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

All trains from Paris →

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.