bicycles on trains and buses

The S-Bahn has places for bikes in the car and people just wheel them on. Lots of Germans take the S Bahn from Berlin out toward Potsdam where there are great places to bike.

Pam

I know there are not many cyclists on this board. Hopeful one with direct experience can provide a more complete answer. Ellen, where are you? You can also try phred.org which is a hard core, long distance touring site. There are lots of people on that site who have toured Europe on bicycles.

Not sure if you mean long distance traveling between cities, or riding the buses and trains in a city? In Frankfurt, for example you are not supposed to take your bike on the train or bus during rush hour times as it takes up too much room. After that, it is fine. Check with each city you plan to visit though, as there may be different regulations for each place.

Riding long distance, you would bring your bike to the car that stores the bikes.

Ed, bahn.de has quite informative pages and even a pdf booklet on how to take bikes on the train. But unfortunately it seems they only offer these informations in German.

Pam, there is no rush hour ban for bikes here in Berlin . And you can enter public buses with bikes (the bus driver has the right to make you leave if a wheelchair or a child stroller comes on board and needs the space though).

In Germany: General rules and regional trains, i.e. IRE, RE, RB (Inter Regio Express, Regional Express, Regional Bahn)
- you have to have a ticket for the bike (there are exceptions in some public transport systems)
- you can only use space explicitly marked as usable as bicycle space
- bicycles (and large luggage) are generally at the end of of the order of precedence, i.e. nobody is legally obliged to make way for your bike. If all the place in the bike space is already occupied, you'll have to wait for the next train.

Intercity trains:
- no bikes in the ICE (Inter City Express)
- in the IC (Inter City) and EC (Euro City) you must have reservations for the bicycle racks

Public transport: details vary depending on the city, e.g. some cities have "bike bans" during rush hours, some don't allow bikes on buses, and so on.

(BTW DB doesn't operates baggage cars)

The first poster's reference to bahn.de as a source of potential information is frustrating in that the site's only mention of bicycles is that they must be packaged for transport and that the site can give you information on how to get to a railway station by bicycle.

Guesses as to what a site might contain are as helpful as guesses about what it might not contain.

Based on further comment below, I'm going to add that I did observe the bikes on the S-Bahn in non-rush hour / commuter times.

Here in Madison, the buses have a bike rack outside in front of the bus for carrying bikes. I guess I forget how bike friendly Madison is!

Pam

Mark, I absolutely stand corrected.

Not a hint of the stuff appears in the English language version of the site, but if you leave it in German it's all there. To make matters even more embarassing, while I was slowly reading the German version, my wife walked over and showed me that google has an auto-translate feature.

Thank you!

We have traveled quite a bit with our bikes in France and some in Germany. The bahn site generally has a box to click if you need a train to take bikes. It's not full-proof by any means. We have found in the last few years that there are more and more trains that will take bikes (not fast intercity, though - like TGV and Thalys (unless wrapped, packed, etc). France doesn't charge extra for bikes, but sometimes Germany does (ours fold, which generally eliminates need for bike "tickets"). Occasionally you will find a train that has wide doors and roll-on cars, but our experience is that we are usually lifting our bikes up several steps and sometimes through narrow doorways (even when there is a bike symbol at the door). It's not easy to take bikes, but it is possible and it's definitely worth it. (sorry, no info about Poland - update later after you've done it, please)