Public buses in Bayern area of Germany

Thank you for the timetables for Munich. That will help a lot when we are staying there. In addition, I need local public buses that run between the small towns below munich such as between Fuessen and Garmishch or Mittwald. Also wanted bus to go from Garmisch to Salsburg without having to go back into Munich. Does anybody know anything about these buses. Thanks

Thank you Steve! You have given me what I needed to manuver in the small local buses. Even the German tourism couldn't tell me this information. I knew if I could just get the secret it would all be clear and now it is. I appreciate your time and effort to help me. Now on to the real planning. Yeah!!

Most of the regional buses in the area south of Munich are run by the RVO (Regionalverkehr Oberbayern). They have a website at www.rvo-bus.de, but it is all in German.

You can download a map of all the bus lines
here (it's a really big pdf file, 2.5 MB). Once you find the number of a bus line you want on the map, you can insert it on this page, in the box after "Liniensuche" and click "Starten". That will get you a schedule for that line.

There are bus lines completely across southern Bavaria, from Füssen to Salzburg, but they are short regional lines. You could piece them together for a trip from Füssen to Salzburg, and it would be very scenic, but also very slow. The rail route from Füssen to Salzburg via Munich would definitely be faster.

If you just wanted to see the area, I would suggest doing it in multiple days and spend some time in towns on the way.

If you really want to go from Füssen to Salzburg, I might suggest:
• Take the bus to Pfronten or Reutte, then the train (Außerfernbahn) to Garmisch-Partenkirchen (GaP), or just take the bus (9606) from Füssen to GaP via Oberammergau.
• From Garmisch you can take another bus (9608) to Kochel (a few connections have a bus change in Wallgau). That route, Wallgau to Kochel is particularly scenic, with a stretch along Walchensee and switchbacks down to Kochelsee.
• In Kochel you change to 9612 to Bad Tölz. When I did that the other direction in August, the route number changed from 9612 to 9608 in Kochel but the bus itself didn't.
• In Bad Tölz you pick up a regional rail line, Bayerische Oberlandbahn (BOB), to Holzkirchen, then take a regional train from Holzkirchen to Rosenheim, where you can join the main line to Salzburg. You can also go from Bad Tölz to Holzkirchen by bus, if you wanted to.

To give a little background for Steve's and Lee's answers: there are very few true intercity bus lines in Germany.

Public transport gets cheaper the more users it has (economics of scale), so German law (the PBefG to be specific) denies licenses for intercity bus lines which mirror existing train lines.

The exception are intercity bus lines between the former German states (mostly run by "Berlin Linien Bus"), because after the reunification a lot of these intercity bus lines were licensed to augment the then insufficient train connections.

As Lee has already pointed out you can "patch together" local bus lines, but that is generally not a very efficient way of intercity travel.

Last August I went from Osterhofen, near Bayrischzell, via Schliersee to Holzkirchen by train, then from Holzkirchen to Bad Tölz by train. From Bad Tölz I took the bus with changes in Kochel and Wallgau to Mittenwald. With the four changes, the trip took me 3h17m. I could have taken the train from Osterhofen all the way into Munich Hbf, made one change, then taken another train out to Mittenwald in 3h47m. I chose the route with the bus for the scenery, and I'm glad I did.

"I have heard there are buses that take less time than the trains."

While possible, I would think it improbable.

Taking regional trains from Füssen to Munich and an express train (RailJet) from there to Salzburg takes less than 4 hours.

Via Michelin gives the driving time from Füssen to Salzburg as 3 hours, and buses, if there were any, stopping more often, would not make it as quickly.

So, if you are concerned about the time, rail is about as good a way as any.

Mark, I like your answer, but the Bahn has recently initiated non-stop bus service from Nürnberg to Prague, paralleling and competing with, rail service. How does that jibe with German law?

"Hope your German is better than mine."

It's got to be better than nothing, right. ;o)

Well, you must have known something, because I think you picked the applicable section. Without translating it immediatelly, I noticed it was talking about grenzüberschreitenden Verkehr, essentially "border crossing traffic", so this must be an exception to what Mark was saying, since the bus crosses into, and runs part way in, the Czech Republic. And, of course, the Bahn appears to be operating it.

I hate reading legalize in any language.

I guess the German government is forbidding competion with the rail service which it subsidizes. That's not as bad as here, where private enterprise wanted to build a beltway around the eastern periphery of town, but were afraid publicly built highways might compete with it and its 22¢/mi toll, so they got the legislature to prohibit any public entity from building a free road parallel to it.

I want to thank all of you for your valuable information. I am checking on bus schedules as we speak. I wanted to add that I was told that the reason the bus from Nurmberg to Praha was put into service is that there is some of the train tracks somewhere between those two cities that is going to be redone during the year. It is supposed to be an express and requires reservations. It can count on a rail pass day.