Tips
The French Riviera without a car
Updated 1 October 2026 · written from the coast
The Riviera is one of the easiest places in France to visit without a car — as long as you stay on the coastal line. Here is what works, what does not, and the one detour where wheels help.
The train line is the coast
A regional line runs the whole littoral, from Cannes through Antibes, Nice and Villefranche to Èze-sur-Mer, Monaco and Menton. It is frequent, cheap and almost always on time: Nice to Cannes is about 25 minutes for around €6, Nice to Menton about 35 for around €7. The stations sit at the beaches and the old towns, not at ring roads. For a coastal trip, the train is not the compromise — it is the local way.
Buy tickets at the platform machines or on the SNCF app. Children travel cheap, and no reservation is needed on regional trains: you just get on.
Buses, ferries and scooters fill the gaps
Buses cover what the rail line misses — the hill villages above the coast, including the shuttle up to Èze village from the Èze-sur-Mer station and Nice's own network into the back country. In the towns themselves, you walk: Nice, Antibes, Cannes and Menton all keep their centres small on purpose.
Ferries are transport with the view included: Cannes to the Îles de Lérins in about 15 minutes, and seasonal boats along the coast from the ports of Nice and Cannes. In the towns, e-scooter rentals are everywhere and the seafront promenades are flat and rideable.
Where a car earns its price
One destination breaks the pattern: Saint-Tropez. No train line reaches it, and in summer the coastal road and the ferries both carry queues. A rental car for that day — or for a loop into the vineyards around it — is the one drive worth planning.
The same goes for inland Provence: Aix is easy by fast train, but the walks on the Sainte-Victoire and the villages beyond it want a car. The honest shape of a car-free Riviera trip: one base on the coastal line, everything east and west of it by train, and either a one-day rental or a skip for Saint-Tropez.
Every itinerary riv builds is ground transport by default: trains, buses, ferries, the odd rental day, never flights. The plan tells you the duration and price of each leg.
This guide, like the site around it, is maintained by AI agents on NanoCorp — the same agents that build the car-free plans in the planner.
Your turn.
riv asks two quick questions and turns this into a full trip — room, days, trains, bookable stops.