How to NL

This page has been superseded by the sky page for the airports, and Benelux by train for other information. The information below is not up to date.

Public transport in Belgium, Luxembourg, and nearby Germany

The following is a brief summary of the public transport situation in Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Germany closest to the Netherlands. (Plus a very little bit of France.)

Belgium

The following are airports with scheduled passenger flights in Belgium. Also shown are their relative location to the Dutch border, and to each other.

Belgium is the first country in Continental Europe to develop a railway network. The railway network in Belgium is much denser than the Netherlands. Belgium has invested a lot more into high speed rail than the Netherlands; Belgium has high-speed rail running in four directions from Brussels, whereas the Netherlands only has high-speed lines going towards the south. (But then the Netherlands is also a lot flatter; many ordinary lines can already achieve relatively high speeds.) Brussels is also a much more important international railway hub than any cities in the Netherlands. (That said, the frequency of train services, and timetabling in general, is much better in the Netherlands than in Belgium.)

There is one passenger railway company: NMBS/SNCB (Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen / Société nationale des chemins de fer belges). (Or in German, NGBE Nationale Gesellschaft der Belgischen Eisenbahnen.) Printed time tables in Dutch, and in French. Network map. My railway network maps of Benelux.

In Belgium, IC is Intercity, L is Lokale trein / train Local (all stop), P is a Piekuurtrein / train d'heure de Pointe (peak hour train), S is Suburban Brussels.

Besides the railway company, (from a user's point of the view) there are three public transport providers in Belgium:

There are buses, metros (Brussels), pre-metros (Brussels, Antwerp), light rail (Charleroi), and trams (Brussels, Antwerp, Gent, Coastal Tram) in Belgium. The Coastal Tram is the world's longest tram line, and run nearly the entire length of the Flemish coast, from Knokke near the Dutch border to Adinkerke near the French border.

All four public transport providers have their own fare structure (see ticket options at NMBS/SNCB, De Lijn, STIB-MIVB, TEC). However, they are moving towards using the MOBIB card, which is Belgium's contactless transport card. All four already use the MOBIB card for at least some subscriptions, but so far only STIB-MIVB and TEC have anonymous MOBIB cards, and only STIB-MIVB uses the MOBIB card for normal single trips (you can pre-load single-trip tickets to a MOBIB card, or sets of 5 singles, sets of 10 singles, or other products). In the future, you should be able to make single journeys on all four companies using the MOBIB card.

On Belgian trains, there is a surcharge of €7 for buying train tickets on the train, if you are inside Belgium. If you fail to buy a train ticket, you will get a fine. See what they say about the various ways of getting a train ticket.

(This says that the surcharge does not apply if you board a Belgian train in neighbouring countries. The page specifically mentions all the stations that Belgian local trains serve in the Netherlands (Maastricht, Maastricht Randwyck, Eijsden, and Roosendaal) and Germany (Aachen Hbf). It also mentions 'all stations in Luxembourg'. For France, it only mentions 'Lille'. I suppose it covers all stations from Lille-Flandres to the Belgian border, but it is unclear.)

Bicycle carriage on Belgian trains: folded folding bike can be taken for free, otherwise €5 one-way, €8 for the entire day in the entire Belgian network.

De Lijn talks about a bicycle ticket for the coastal tram. On STIB-MIVB, see what they say about bicycle carriage (basically, folding bicycles allowed; normal bicycles allowed, with restrictions, on low-floor metro and low-floor trains). TEC says that only folding bicycles are allowed on their vehicles.

There is the Euregio-ticket, which is a day ticket for up to two adults and three children, valid on weekends and holidays, covering all regular buses and many local trains in Liège Province, Belgian Limburg, southern Dutch Limburg, and the Aachen area in Germany.

See Vrienden van de Voetveren for a list of ferries in Belgium (and also in the Netherlands/Luxembourg).

Luxembourg

Luxembourg Airport LUX ( English | French | German ) is a small airport in terms of passengers numbers, but it is the fifth largest cargo airport in Europe, with many long haul cargo flights. From the airport, there are bus 16 (faster) and bus 29 (slower) to Luxembourg train station. There is also bus 117 to Trier (Germany), and many other shuttle services. For trains to the Netherlands, you can take the faster train northeast to Brussels, or the slower train north to Liège, and then connect from there. See the international rail page.

The national rail operator is CFL (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois). See their timetables, printed timetables (domestic and regional, long-distance international), and electronic network map. It also operates buses to Lorraine TGV and Saarbrücken Hbf.

There are three local bus companies:

There is also Luxtram. CFL has a funicular running between Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg station and the tram stop Rout Bréck-Pafendall.

Detailed information on all four public transport providers can be obtained from the Mobilitéit website. The entire country runs on the same fare structure. Kuerzzäitbilljee is a 2-hour ticket, and Dagesbilljee is a 1-day ticket (which costs just two times a 2-hour ticket). For Luxembourgish buses that run into neighbouring countries, the same domestic ticket is valid to many points close to the border, while further destinations are classified into zone 1 and zone 2 (map).

AVL says that single 2-hour/1-day tickets can be bought from the bus driver, while bundles of ten 2-hour tickets, or five 1-day ticekts are sold elsewhere. CFL says that there are ticket-machines at the train stations, and tickets from the machines are validated immediately. Tickets bought inside a train cost an extra €1.

Monatsstreckenabo is a monthly short distance ticket. See this page and the map in it for what is considered short distance. From the map, you can see that the country is divided into many hexagons; 'short distance' is six or less hexagons away from your origin; a group of yellow hexagons is considered one hexagon if it is your origin or your destination.

mTicket is a smart phone ticket, and mKaart is the contactless smart card for the whole country. Various tickets and subscriptions can be loaded to them.

On CFL trains and buses, bicycles can be taken for free.

There is a German foot passenger/car ferry crossing the Mosel between Wasserbillig (Luxembourg) and Oberbillig (Germany) (it has its own fare structure).

Nearby Germany

These are the airports in Germany that are relatively close to the Netherlands (e.g., these are the German airports with Dutch webpages). Roughly from north to south:

The dominant provider of passenger rail service in Germany is Deutsche Bahn 'German Rail'. There are also other smaller comapanies. The DB journey planner, www.bahn.com, is a very useful tool. Not only do they show journeys on DB trains, they also show journeys on trains of other companies, journeys on many other modes of public transport (including many ferries), and also connections to/from/within other European countries. (Their coverage of non-train journeys in foreign countries is not necessarily good, so do not rely on it totally for travel outside Germany.)

A distinction needs to be made between long-distance trains, and regional/short-distance trains. With DB, For long-distance services, there are the faster ICE (Intercity-Express), and the slower EC (EuroCity; international services) or IC (Intercity; mostly domestic and some international services).

For regional/short-distance trains, there are the faster IRE (Interregio-Express) and RE (Regional-Express), and the slower RB (Regionalbahn), which are usually all-stop trains. In larger urban areas, there is also the S-bahn, which is suburban rail service, stopping more stops than RB. (But some of these 'suburban' lines go very far.)

This long-distance versus regional/short-distance distinction is important; this is because there are many tickets which give unlimited usage of the regional/short-distance trains, plus bus/trams/U-bahn (underground trains) etc., but not long-distance trains. (This is different from Benelux, where InterCity servicess fall in the same price-range as slower train services per distance.) Tickets issued by local public transport authorities are typically also valid on the regional/short-distance trains.

Other than buying normal train tickets from DB, there are also many 'offers'. Amongst the many 'offers' are the 'regional offers'. There are the nation-wide day-tickets for regional/short-distance trains: the Quer-duchs-Land-Ticket (weekday), and the Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket (weekend). Even better-value are the state-wide day tickets, the Länder-Tickets. The price for a single-person ticket is often not a good deal, but the price for a multiple-person ticket is a bargain. In addition, people can take their own young children/grand-children along for free with these tickets. Please read the conditions of the tickets very carefully before you purchase and use them. (I am not responsible if you misread the ticket conditions.)

In the links above, you might have read the term 'transport association'. A Verkehrsverbund '(public) transport association' is a geographically based association of all the public transport providers in an area. (Providers of bus-, tram-, U-bahn, S-bahn services and the like.) The aims are, amongst other things, to have a unified fare/ticket system, to coordinate their services, and to give unified information to the public.

Most transport associations have a unified fare structure. On top of this, there are some umbrella-fare-structures that are valid in several transport associations. For instance, in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), there are many tickets that are valid throughout the entire NRW state, including the services that they run in neighbouring areas, e.g. the German buses to Venlo and Nijmegen. The bicycle day-ticket in NRW is also a NRW-wide ticket. The public transport operators in most districts in Germany fall into a transport association. The following is a map of the transport associations in Germany from the German Wikipedia page on Verkehrsverbund. (The shades show various types of transport associations; areas without a transport association are in light grey.)  Karte der Verkehrsverbünde und Tarifverbünde in Deutschland

Bicycle carriage rules differ greatly with different public transport providers; in general, the word to search for in websites is Fahrradmitnahme (or just Fahrrad 'bicycle'). (NRW has unified rules; see below). With DB, this is their page on Bahn und Fahrrad 'Train and bicycle'. With long-distance trains, bicycle carriage is 'generally not possible' on ICE (but see what Dutch Rail says on the carriage of bicycles on the ICE to/from the Netherlands), but possible on EC and IC (with a bicycle ticket, on domestic trains). For regional/short-distance trains (IRE, RE, RB, S-bahn), it is different in different states.

I will now talk about the transport associations in western Germany closest to Benelux. I will discuss them from north to south, and from west to east.

Niedersachen 'Lower Saxony'

There is the its own websiteNiedersachsen-Ticket 'Lower Saxony Ticket' (DB website in English, in German, information from in German). (Read the clauses very carefully!) There is also a Niedersachsen-Ticket-plus-Groningen which is very good value (page in German, Dutch). An interactive map of the train lines in Lower Saxony can be found here.

In Lower Saxony, the following public transport regions are closest to the Netherlands. (I think none of these transport associations have tickets that include regional/short-distance trains):

Nordrhein-Westfalen 'North Rhein-Westphalia' (NRW)

There is the SchönerTagTicket NRW 'Beautiful Day Ticket North Rhine-Westphalia'. (In English, in German; Read the ticket clauses very carefully!) Here are other good deals in NRW from the DB page in German (see the navigation bar on the left). Here is a website for buses and trains in NRW: busse-und-bahnen.nrw.de. Information on NRW-tickets, a printed network map (last page), and an electornic map of regional/short-distance train network in NRW. (In the printed network map: NRW-tarif 'Pauschalpreis' tickets are valid on the dotted lines, but NRW-tarif is not valid on the black lines. ALL lines directly between the Netherlands and NRW are dotted lines; the line between Aachen and Belgium is black.)

Information on taking a bicycle on trains and buses in the North Rhine-Westphalia. (It is generally allowed in trains and buses, with some restrictions. Folded-up folding bicycles are considered luggage.)

In North Rhein-Westphalia, the following public transport regions are closest to the Netherlands and Belgium. (The tickets of these transport associations include the usage of regional/short-distance trains):

Rheinland-Pfalz und Saarland 'Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland'

The Rhineland-Pflaz-Ticket 'Rheinland-Palatinate-Ticket' and the Saarland-Ticket are the same thing; they are both valid in both Rheinland-Palatinate and Saarland. Saarland has a number of special cross-border tickets, including the Saar-Elsass-Ticket to Alsace (the weekend 5-person day-ticket is good deal), and the Saar-Lor-Lux-Ticket, a weekend day-ticket that covers Saarland (Germany), Lorraine (France), and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

A network map of the rail network can be found here (or here, and then press Liniennetzkarte).

In Rhineland-Palatinate, there is one transport region that borders Belgium and Luxembourg. (Their tickets include the usage of regional/short-distance trains):

There is one transport region in Saarland. (Their tickets include the usage of regional/short-distance trains):

Nearby France

May as well. Firstly, SNCF (French rail): www.sncf.com (English, Deutsch). Electronic whereabouts of all trains.

The following are the local public transport providers, from Calais west along the coast and the Belgian and Luxembourgian borders. (A full list can be found at transbus.org).


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