Germany has too many train ticket options.
I need suggestions on which train ticket to get. I'll be based in Wiesbaden for six days at the end of April. Daily trips will be on either S-Bahn, U-Bahn or Regional trains in the area with no trip more than around 75 minutes. I'll also be using buses/trams in Wiesbaden.
RMV day tickets or Hessenticket can be good options:
https://www.rmv.de/c/en/tickets/your-ticket/tickets-overview/day-tickets
end of April
When two different calendar month the Deutschland-Ticket makes no sense for six days.
The RMV Tickets, the Hessenticket and Deutschland-Ticket all cover the same travel equipment, whether inside or outside of Wiesbaden, in their respective areas of coverage.
A 75-minute radius does not tell us where you are going, and there are many places you CANNOT go within such a radius if you opt to go with RMV tickets. A simple train ride north along the Rhine to St Goarshausen (50 minutes) on a RMV or Hessenticket would take you outside the RMV and not be covered without additional ticketing.
As for RMV pricing: Example: A day ticket for Wiesbaden-Frankfurt round trip (45-50 minutes) is priced at €22; a week-long ticket for the same route is €66. More distant destinations may cost more for each type of ticket.
The D-Ticket (€58) makes this complicated travel area very simple. It will get you from FRA airport to Wiesbaden in the first place (assuming you fly into FRA.) It has zero additional costs no matter how many days you use it or where you choose to travel. As long as you are using it within the month of April, the Deutschland-Ticket (€58) is clearly the most versatile option and the clear choice, IMO. Even if your stay includes a day or two in May, which would require additional ticketing, a D-Ticket for April would make sense to me.
My journeys will include:
FRA to Wiesbaden
Trips south to Mainz, Worms and Speyser but on different days,
Wiesbaden to Frankfurt Hauptbanhof
Travel within Wiesbaden.
It would all be in April.
Worms is an RNN ticket, which must be used with the RNN app. S[eyer you can use a Rheinland-Pfalz Ticket. The rest are RMV tickets.
The various regional and day pass tkts are well and good. That being said I lived near Wiesbaden for more than a decade and simply bought a ticket at a kiosk for buses or trains. Unless you are carefully counting Euro cents angonizing over the “best” ticket strikes me as silly. I only examined travel carefully for long distance trips and used a Bahn25 Card.
Just an alternate opinion. By the way there hasn’t been a Tram line in Wiesbaden for more than 70 years but the local bus system is quite useful.
Sam's analysis for individual day tickets to those destinations is solid. Those tickets should all be bought just prior to travel. However... once you add all those tix up and consider the hassle of getting individual tickets as well as abiding by their limitations, it should be clear that the Deutschland-Ticket is likely to be the winner. You buy it once by subscription like NOW. You cancel said subscription as required. And it covers all your trips.
The R-P Ticket for Speyer alone costs €29, which is already half of the D-Ticket price. But besides its obvious value, the D-Ticket's additional perk is that it allows travel at any hour; the R-P ticket allows travel only after 9 am if it's a weekday. (This trip is 90 minutes each way, incidentally.)
https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/regional/deutschland-ticket
The Man in Seat 61 provides tips for subscription and cancellation:
In the summer of 21017 I had earmarked a few hours for a day trip from Frankfurt to Wiesbaden, took the bus from Wiesbaden Hbf to the cemetery. I should have allowed more time to see the Zentrum.
