Public transport in Frankfurt am Main

Going to Frankfurt? Using public transportation? Here's how that works.

Music:
"Style Funk" and "Hot Swing"
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[wallykaspars]

This is an excellent explanation for a vast transportation network. I lived in Frankfurt for eleven years and found the system to be wonderful to get to any destination with ease.

[kilésengati]

This video seems very useful for people who are foreign to German public transport. Well done.

[leeoien]

Just what I needed! Short, clear, and to the points

[kennikitty]

Public transportation is very good here in Germany. You can get everywhere for most of the day no problem in any city. Only small villages might have problems with one Bus comming 4 times a day or so. Even bigger villages often have an S-Bahn station with trains comming every 20 minutes. Only in the middle of the night, for a few lonely hours, they trains don't move.
I live in North Rhine-Westphalia close to the Ruhrgebiet so public transportation is pretty much amazing here. Sure, it might be a bit confusing for non-locals at first. Here in Düsseldorf the U-Bahn sometimes has has longer parts above the ground than the Sraßenbahn (our term for "Stadtbahn"), so try expaining why we call it subway. On the other hand, I had no problem getting around in Lonon with public transportation, the subway was my best friend over there. It wasn't really any more difficult compared to Germany. You only need to know 1) where you are 2) where you need to go and 3) in which direction your train is moving.

I'm 28 years old and I don't have a driver's licence. I simply never felt the need to get one. The only times I wish I had one, is when the Deutsche Bahn is on strike again, but even then I usually come around pretty good with alternative regional public transportation.

[felixw]

In one video (can´t remember which) you said you aren´t a public transport enthusiast. The amount of videos you made on this topic tells me that this is a lie. (And I love you for that)

[outrageousgamer]

This guy is awesome (I've been subbed for mouths now).

[reinerjung]

Very nice. There is one thing to add. In case you have an Android phone, you want to install the Öffi app. It works in most German cities and provides address to address search all well tailored to correspond with signs usually found around public transport stations.

[ManusBahnvideos]

Deine Videos gefallen mir alle sehr gut, nicht nur die, die etwas mit der Bahn zu tun haben :-) Hier möchte ich mich ausnahmsweise auch einmal äußern: Die Tageskarten kosten seit etwa 1-2 Jahren in den meisten Fällen sogar weniger als zwei Einzelfahrkarten. Ansonsten sehr schön recherchiert und erklärt, wie immer!

[moatl]

Das Video hätt' mir vor zwei Jahren geholfen, als ich eine Woche in einem Hotel am Frankfurter Ostbahnhof war. In der Woche bin ich aber nur einmal Taxi und sonst mit der Tram gefahren.

[NamelessBody]

Actually, to get to Merianplatz, your U-Bahn is the U4 either with the final destination "Enkheim" OR "Seckbacher Landstraße", as every other U4 train only travels up to that station. It's printed in bold on the map. So sometimes one line may have several possible final destinations.
To make things more confusion, the trains going to Seckbacher Landstraße will have "Bornheim" written in the first line on their front, followed by a smaller "Seckbacher Landstraße", because that station is within the district of Bornheim. Whereas Enkheim is the name both of the station and the district it is in.

[zeemon]

While U-Bahn and S-Bahn are distinguished by the letters in front of the numbers, trams and busses are not told apart in that way. They both just have a two digit number in most cases. Trams range from 11 to 21 and busses start at 30.

[Oromis]

Ahh Frankfurt Hbf, I had an overnight stay there earlier this year due to a Belgian strike delaying my incoming train and making me miss a connection. That wasn't a fun night.

[ThamiorSilberdrache]

That's mostly how public transport works in almost every big city in Germany although construction works are no nasty surprises but very common in the city of Stuttgart. (And will be for at least -and that is the most optimistic guess- five more years. Most likely it will rather last for twenty years.)

[thomasheyl]

Great video and fully correct (I'm a Frankfurt resident). I add that the stop announcements in the U-Bahn (subway) and Straßenbahn (tram) via loudspeaker will be first spoken in German and then repeated in English (and not the worst!).

[sirphoenix]

Hey, ich wusste zwar schon einiges über Frankfurt uns seinen ÖPNV, aber das hat mich echt nochmal ein Stückchen weiter gebracht. Ich mache am übernächsten Samstag nämlich einen sehr kurzen Ausflug nach Frankfurt. Keep it up. :D

[amiausUSA]

I lived in Frankfurt am Main the summers of 1993 and 1994. There used to be a very "simple" fare scheme called "Fahr Bunt" until it was changed in 1995 to allow for adding zones past the "blue zone" as the yellow was the city zone, then there was green, red and blue. I would buy a Monatskarte for about DM 93, valid only in the yellow zone, just fine up to and including Frankfurt's Nieder-Eschbach where I worked, or even as far as Fechenheim, no need to buy yet another ticket.

Frankfurt Airport had an interesting situation for day passes, between the airport and the city, you would be entirely in the yellow zone, but for a single ticket you had to buy a ticket for the green and the yellow zones, two in total.

[lauraboschan]

I drive from Willy-Brandt-Platz to Merianplatz everyday to work, yaaaay now I finally learned how to :D

[molonlabe]

Well done. Concise and highly informative

[syedjavedahmad]

You are the best, thanks a million, we are visiting this summer. 👍👍

[SimonS]

Very nice video, what about making a similar one for other German cities too? (Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, the Ruhr etc)