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TER trains in France often have special discounts valid only for travel within a single region. For example, I mentioned such discounts for the Rhône-Alpes region in this answer.

Are there any TER discounts which can be used even for cross region travel? To take a concrete example, what about a Lyon → Marseille train, which goes from Rhône-Alpes to Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA)? There are separate discounts both in Rhône-Alpes and in PACA, but what about travel from one to the other?

I am asking here because I found even the regional discounts difficult to discover, and they turned out to be usable only when buying tickets from the ticket office (not from the ticket machine, and not from voyages-sncf.com).

I am looking for discounts specifically for TER (not TGV or other high-speed trains), and only for those which do not require the payment of a one-time fee (e.g. purchase of a card) and which have no age restrictions.

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    For those curious why I am looking specifically at TER: I want to be able to carry bicycles and I want the flexibility: tickets not bought online are valid for a week. I did search for an answer and didn't find anything. But my French is very limited, so there may be something I didn't find.
    – Szabolcs
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 10:15
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    For many of those trains, the regions offer the discount on the whole line: for example, the Rhône-Alpes region (soon to include also Auvergne) considers Mâcon and Genève as any other station.
    – Vince
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 10:22
  • @Vince But actually at this moment they do not offer the discount for Auvergne (even though as far as I understand the regions are already merged), so it is not valid for any TER train. I wonder if it would be okay to buy an A -> B ticket, then a B -> C, and use them for a single A -> C trip. The tickets can be bought online on each local TER site. The disadvantage (at least in Rhone-Alpes) is that it seems to be necessary to choose a specific train when buying online, so some flexibility is lost.
    – Szabolcs
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 10:26
  • Difficult to prove a negative but it's typically not the case, possibly for legal and budget reasons. As an example, the Metrolor tickets explicitly exclude inter-region travel and trips to Luxembourg.
    – Relaxed
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 11:38
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    By the way, political merge of regions has not yet propagated to public companies or administrations (railways, education...).
    – mouviciel
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 11:38

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No, there is no general discount on TER which would apply on multiple regions.

That said, about your Lyon-Marseille example, Illico discounts offered by Rhône-Alpes region explicitely mention that they are valid on that TER under some conditions. See e.g., Illico Annuel:

Conditions parcours interrégionaux :

  • Vers Bourgogne, Franche-Comté et Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
  • Abonnements vendus en Rhône-Alpes et sur support papier (pas sur carte OùRA!)
  • Billets avantages (réductions autres trajets) possibles uniquement sur les trajets en Rhône-Alpes

which translates as:

Conditions for interregional routes:

  • To Burgundy, Franche-Comte and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
  • Only for paper-based subscriptions sold in Rhône-Alpes (not on the OùRA railcard!)
  • "Billets avantages" ([discount on trips not included in the subscription]) possible only on routes in Rhône-Alpes
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  • Note that Illico annuel is a pass, made for residents (it says it's worth it beyond 8 trips a month).
    – Vince
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 12:31
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    note : carte in "carte OùRA!" does not mean map but card.
    – Gilles V.
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 14:05
  • Apart from those, if you travel very regularly and for work (or studies? maybe) (ie, you live in one aera and work/study in another, and travel, say, several times a week), you can usually get very good prices on "abonnements" (subscriptions). Conditions varies, but your company should be able to help (or the SNCF, too)
    – Olivier Dulac
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 14:17

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