Getting Around Morocco: Train, Bus, Taxi or Rental Car?

ONCF runs a modern, double-track network along the Atlantic corridor and inland to the imperial cities. The Tanger–Casablanca Al Boraq line is genuine high speed at 320 km/h; elsewhere trains cruise at 100–160 km/h on rolling stock that would not embarrass a European operator. Journeys are calm, the café cars work, and the stations are the safest public spaces in the country.

Practical details: buy second class for anything under three hours — it is air-conditioned and usually half the price. First class earns its keep on the Casablanca–Marrakech run. Reserve in the ONCF app or at the counter; trains sell out on Fridays and during Eid. And note what is missing: no train to Essaouira, Agadir, the Sahara or the High Atlas villages. The train gets you across the country; the last hour is always something else.

A grand taxi is not a large taxi — it is a shared seven-seat Mercedes that runs fixed routes between towns, filling up and leaving. You pay per seat to your destination, not per car, and locals pay exactly what you pay. The petit taxi inside cities is the metered one: insist on the meter (compteur) or agree the price before the doors close.

The rules that matter: front seat belongs to the driver unless you are three or fewer passengers, so a solo traveller usually rides in front. Bags go on the roof or squeeze in. For a private grand taxi — the sensible move for the Dadès gorge or the road to Merzouga — negotiate the whole car in advance, in daylight, and settle the price before anyone sits down. Doubling the quoted shared rate buys you the vehicle outright; that is the entire negotiation.

Two sample weeks, done without a rental car. First: train to Marrakech, CTM bus to Essaouira, grand taxi to the Imlil valley in the Atlas, train home — three modes, zero parking stress. Second: train to Fes, Supratours overnight to Merzouga, shared grand taxi back through the valleys — you cross the whole country and never touch a steering wheel.

And the hybrid most people end up with: trains and buses for the spine of the trip, then a private car with a driver for the two or three days in the mountains or the desert, negotiated locally or through your riad. A driver-guide for those days costs less than a rental plus fuel plus the parking plus the grey hair, and he knows which side of the road the goats are on.