Rants about the Munich public transport

Scheiße S-bahn drivers who drive off while I’m trying to get in the “right�? car to the airport after running along the Feldmoching platform trying to find it, causing me to miss my flight.

On the other hand, props to the people running my interview for agreeing to do it by phone after all. Phew!

Its clearly marked on the train, and there are load announcements you have to change. The Airport train sits at Feldmoching for another 2 to 3 minutes after the Freising part leaves !

My complaint with the S-Bahn is its always late ! Just getting back to normal, planned to go out last night, go to the last S-Bahn that would get me home by 6pm, and then there is a electrical failure and all S-Bahns from Höllreigelskreuth are 20 minutes late !

pepper, it is clearly marked on the train, but there’s no sign at Feldmoching telling you where your part of the train will arrive. Also, the train stopped at Feldmoching for all of about 20 seconds (it splits up later at Neufahrn where it does indeed stop for quite a while).

The problem was that it turned out I was waiting on the platform very near to where the front of the train stopped. By the time I ran (and I mean ran) to the airport part at the rear, the doors were closed. The train then stood there for another 10 seconds at least while I punched the door button to no avail, then it just drove off.

There were very few people on the platform. I have no doubt whatsoever that the driver saw me running along the platform and punching the door button.

The S-bahn was my least favorite service in Austria, and it is here, too. Give me a decent U-bahn or DB/ÖBB train any day.

U6 to Hochbruck - get on the "wrong" carriage at the "wrong" end of the train, and you'll probably miss your bus, because the bus driver will not wait for you to walk the length of the platform.
Unless of course the driver is either reading the newspaper (underlining words with his fingers and mouthing them because he is practically illiterate) or chatting to one of the other bus drivers and smoking a fag. Then you have plenty of time to stroll up the platform, get on the bus, and sit and wait for the jerk to finish his oh-so-important article about some dodgy German celeb or how one of Siegfried and Roy's tigers has bruised his toe or something.

The fact that there are no rush hour trains on the U1/U2 after 9am.
People on flexi are still communting then and the trains are jammers!

When the train is really busy you are letting loads of people off and the driver makes some bitchy comment about "using all the doors".

The escalators at Fraunhoferstrasse station, ALWAYS broken!

Today I'd say the S-Bahn is the worst given that todays 0900 S5 was 15 min late into Hauptbanhof. I missed my bus, and it is not a short walk to work from the train station (there are no buses after the one I tried to get on).

As a whole, however, MVV is pretty damn good. It is not as good as New York's public transit (where most Subways run all night) but does smell less of urine.

Nah, German wee just smells different.

@ grtho - Agreed the escalators at Fraunhoferstrasse are ALWAYS broken. I do not understand that, if they are always breaking, why do they just not replace them !

Because of the Spargel?

during the times of operation ie not at night, the U-Bahn is one of the best public transport systems I know of, whereas by contrast the S-Bahn almost, but not quite, compares to UK trains

I don't use either much myself but my Frau uses bus and bahn everyday for work and got really pissed off with the S-bahn (station within wallking distance) that she now takes an extra bus ride for 4 minutes to the U-bahn.

well not always! I used the lift down to the platform in Moosfeld and smelt just like those good old red British telephone boxes! mmmmmmm

Can't say I agree with any of this. I've never had a late bus or U-bahn. I rarely use S-bahn and you can always change carriages at the splitting point.
Bus drivers are all cocks who act as if it's the worst thing ever selling you a ticket, close doors on people, don't wait for people running for bus, are generally obnoxious and unfriendly when asked simple questions like, is the next stop X.

@ Big C: I think most people here have actually said the U-Bahn is pretty good. It is just the S-Bahn that pisses people off

Sorry unclear post. I meant to start with - I don't agree with the first couple of comments! Ooops!

I will vote for the bus. Not for the timeliness of service, but for the poor driving skills.

Mostly I take the bus and I notice that the bus drivers are more than likely swerving rudely around bikes and double parked cars like the road space is owed to them. As they take the lane back greedily they make all the old people who haven't gotten to their seat yet wildly flail their arm in the air as they topple backwards loosing all hope of keeping their hips intact when they land.

That's another thing. Old people on the busses. They all seem to enter the bus fumbling with those punch cards and trying to get the fold right as they stamp it in the blue box, but can't seem to get it in the hole because the driver is swerving and tapping the brakes like he's handling a 360 Modena in an empty parking lot. Don't get me wrong, I love the old people. It's just that I hop on the bus calmly with my montly pass tucked away in my wallet and grab a seat while the elderly try to manage their canes, a small piece of paper and surfing and wonder why they don't have monthly passes as well.

The other day a lady who was about 65+ and had no business getting out of her seat while we were still two blocks from the stop proceeded to make her way to the back door, and when the driver swerved around a bicycle she began to tip forward- over corrected and fell back and smacked me in the nuts with her free hand that was trying to grab something to break her fall. Scheise Maroni! I yelled but shrugged it off for the moment only to feel it hit me as I was getting off at the next stop which was mine.

I think I will stick to my bike as much as possible.

I hate the bus with a passion

It happens at least once a week that the bus pulls put at romanplatz just as Im waiting to cross the road to the bus stop, I make a mad dash across the 3 lanes of traffic to the bus...with the bus driver obviously watching me...for the bus to pull off just as you get to the door...if that isnt annoying enough it only drives 10 yards and sits at the red light for 3 minutes! But will they let you on...NO! grrrrrrr!!!

Yesterday, a woman this time, was sat in her bus just before the busstop with hazzards flashing, another 42 had just left the stop as my tram pulled up so I presumes one broken down and thats why she was still sat there. 5 mins she pulls off. the road is clear, the lights are all on green and she stops at the bus stop...so me thinks, well shes not broken down and if stopped at the bus stop with the destination and number on display must be in service...nope after 10 seconds of bashing on the button she pulls off... what is wrong with these people? what peverse pleasure could you honestly get from that?

And only monday, this time on way back to romanplatz, an elderly couple just about gave themselves a heart attack running as best they could for the bus, get to the door... driver wont open it but still sat there for 2 minutes whilst the couple are frantically trying to get the door to open.

Bus drivers the world over are assholes - saw a bus on fire (I shit you not - top deck was fully alight) drive past my flat once...Ran into the street and hammered on the door "YOU ARE ON FIRE!!! OI!!! YOU ARE ON FIRE YOU DEAF SON OF A BITCH!!!". He looked at me in a bemused manner and drove on. I went out an hour later - about a mile up the road were the remains of a double decker bus...

At least in England they admit that it it part of their job to sell you a ticket.

My bus route a couple of months back ... Woman with child in pushchair and a bag. Places bag on ground ... Lifts pushchair onto bus and bends down to pick up her bag ... Bus driver shuts doors and drives off leaves woman standing on pavement while her child is being slowly driver away. The look of total incomprehension on the womans face said it all. The peeps on the bus did make a huge fuss though to be fair, calling the driver every name under the sun.

MVG stopped bus and tram drivers selling tickets as the number of people using this service was small and they were disproportionately holing up the service.

Many bus routes in London are being switched over to Pre-pay only too!

I remember regularly waiting over 30 mins for my South West Trains train to arrive and take me home to Richmond. I'm not sure that has ever happened here.

I spent the last 7 or 8 years living in dublin. Munich is public transport heaven - you people have no idea what bad public transport is. I condemn all who trash the MVV to one month of friday and saturday nights on the last No 39 NiteLink bus from D´Olier St to Hartstown...and an Our Father and 3 Hail Mary´s. Amen.

s-bahn. My gf has to come from Friesing, she is always compailing. Glad it close enough to cycle for me (10km).

like this...

oder

Nevermind the MVV. Did anyone see the footage on the news last week from the Hamburg U-bahn.

Some scumbag pushed a random woman in front of an oncoming train. Lucky for her another woman grabbed her arm and saved her. the guy just sauntered off as if nothing had happened. It was all on the news. The thing that confused me was - there was pretty clear footage of the guy but the cops were clueless and appealing for witnesses !

Those (British people at least) of you complaining about the public transport here have obviously been away from the UK for too long...

I voted "bus", as I've had the most bad experiences with bus drivers. The worst was one who watched me running towards him, then put his foot down just before I could reach the door (despite the fact that he wasn't due to leave for a couple of minutes, and the next bus wasn't for 40 minutes). I was seething...but I've had just as bad in the UK (such as the driver who slowed down as he approached the bus stop, but then accelerated and drove off again instead of stopping, despite the fact that there were two of us waiting and waving at him).

But punctuality-wise, the public transport here is pretty damn good. I hear people complaining when their S-Bahn is a few minutes late - but in the UK I would feel pleasantly surprised on the rare occasions that my train was actually on time. Over here I find out what times the buses run - in the UK I would just have a general idea of how frequently they ran (you can forget actual times).

And I'm not even going to start on the price of tickets...

Limited time only. Buy an opera ticket and get one free evening of MVV rides to and from the show. It is in small print on the ticket and due to budget cutbacks from the city they will stop offering sometime soon.

nice one walker !!

what they don´t show is yer man glassing the next guy cos he puked all over him when he was trying to shoot up !! Then slipping on the p1ss stains and falling into two fine young how-er-ye´s and a general melee breaking out !!

ha acqua I can beat that.

I was on a bus once from Drogheda to dublin. there were 2 lanes and a slow turn in the road plus a hard shoulder. a car tried to pass the bus on the hard shoulder. the bus driver saw him and closed the gap - it was unbelieveable - he almost caught the car between the bus and the barrier. twas like sometihn from Mad Max !!

must have been him!!!

I can't say anything bad about the public transport here having come originally from Dublin. If there is a way to do the whole thing badly you can be sure that the Dublin transport people have tried it. Compared to the pile of shite that exists there, the situation here in Munich is sheer heaven.

I would however like to vote the big long one in Karlsplatz as my least favourite escalator in Munich

Worth resurrecting this!

I also missed my flight to Sweden cos the S-Bahn was delay too and when I was living in Harr the S5 is always late! -.-

I loves tram! when I lived in Pasing I always got on the 19 as it goes all the way from the west to the east so Im just sitting in the tram and see what people doing =)

Need to rant about the bus driver tonight, and this seemed like an appropriate post.

Got on bus with 2 visiting friends, showed valid Partnertageskarte. Sat down, continued chatting. Bus driver gets out of seat comes over and asks for ticket. Conversation in German goes something like - OK, - thats for 1, what about for all of you. Me - It's a Partnercard. Him - Peers at ticket again, - well thats for two of you, what about for all?. Me - It's a partnercard, good for 5 people, we are 3. Him, - no good for two. Me - No, good for five. Him - Oh never mind.

Then he proceeds to go back to his seat and giggle with native at the front seat.

Why??? Why treat me as a joke? Grrr. Got all worried the rules had changed, but just checked and Lo, they are the same. Wanker bus drivers. Grrrrr.

My Rant: Is there a a way to buy a monthly ticket for just a single S-bahn line? I only one line daily, but I'm paying for the never used ability to go out to Wolfsrathausen. Grrr.

I'm pretty sure there isn't, but that seems dumb considering how many other useless options there are.

There is not.

Until a couple of years ago, Partner-Tageskarten have indeed only been valid for a max. of 2 persons. This was changed a couple of years ago to 5 persons. I think the bus driver still had the old rule on his mind (bus drivers aren't trained too well when it comes to ticket rule changes, since they don't sell them anymore). In case something like this should happen again - look out for the fare zone maps that are posted on every bus:
http://www.mvg-mobil.de/pdf-dateien/netzpl...plan_gesamt.pdf.
These maps clearly state that the ticket is good for a party of 5 and should make the bus driver shut up.


Also, this was exactly the case until 1999 or so. There haven't been the 16 rings we have nowadays, but hundreds of hundreds of very little zones, allowing (or rather, forcing) you to only pay for the exact S-Bahn line you need. In 1999 they thankfully changed that complex system to 16 simple rings, allowing you to not only use "your line", but also all the other lines in your rings. This was mainly to encourage commuters to also use their tickets for shopping and field trips on the weekends. The best: as a bargain, the prices didn't change. So, it's not dumb, it's just a little extra the MVV is giving to you - it's up to you if you use it or not, and it's free, so why complain about it?

The Frankfurt public transport authority still has a system which limits you to your exact line; it's horrible. You don't save a dime but you are limited to your exact line, which totally sucks if you want to do some weekend trips from time to time.

You forgot to mention the hours of mindless queuing at Starnberger Flügelbahnhof to get an official MVV ID card or make any changes to your route. Awful.

Still, now I'm commuting outwards, the six rings I pay for are only of use getting to work anyway.

Get a bike.

Guy, I'd just add on the 2 most inner zones to have zones 1-8 then.
Just one return trip into town per week would pay for itself roughly.
But I'm an anorak.


I THINK it's the CSU who are proposing simplifying the MVV tarif if elected in the upcoming council elections but I'm not sure how they plan to do it.
What ticket options would you abolish?

Nearly everything. I'm a big fan of NYC's system.

Flat price single rides
cheap day cards
monthly commuter cards.

So... kind of like the Tageskarte and Monatskarte?

Not quite. Because (correct me if I'm wrong) in NYC there are no rings at all

$1 gets you into the subway, and you can take it where ever you want until you exit.

$5 (or $7?) lets you ride the whole day, anywhere

I don't know what a month card is.

Basically, my complaint is about rings/stripes/zones/raum/XXL/etc. All this complication.

I think it's fair enough. I live in the MVV region yet I'm 40km from central Munich. The border of the MVV is in Moosburg, which is 60km from central Munich. I'm not entirely sure why I, or someone in Moosburg, should pay the same to get to Hauptbahnhof as someone living in Pasing or Schwabing. A day ticket in the Innenraum costs €5, which is hardly extortionate.

I'd agree about the rings thing. it's a bit confusing, especially at first. Really, though, Munich has the best public transport system I've come across as yet. It's efficient, it's clear, it's hard to get onto the wrong train. in the short time I've been here, there's only been 2 strike days (only two! and they're one day at a time, not weeks on end until matters are resolved, and never without warning to the people who depend on it!), and no days when the public transport hasn't run AT ALL because of the snow. There;s no "off season" when the transport (I'm thinking of ferries here) only runs half as often as usual. The subways and trams and buses all keep going (at least in the city proper) until 2 am, and even then there's night buses and night trams, so you're never forced to take a cab home if you decide to stay out after midnight (or the last bus decides not to come at all), the buses, trams and subways don't change routes or numbers with little to no warning or depending on the day of the week, there's always an idiot-proof timetable on every clearly-marked bus-stop and tram-stop, and most of them have a screen telling you when the next one's coming. All this, for the very reasonable price of 44 Euro per month? I pay that in Halifax for the public transport system with all of the aforementioned faults and more! Not having to wait outside without a bus shelter at 20 below every day, only to have the bus be late, be too full to stop or just not show up is also a perk! I could keep going, but I'll spare you. Suffice to say, the public transportation around here is pretty awesome. It has it's faults, no doubt, and there are ways it could be improved, but it's still awesome.

I haven't read the whole thread, but compared to London public transport Munich has a much better service. The last train out to Heathrow on a Sunday from the centre of town is about 11:30 pm and the first one on a Monday is about 7:30 am. So if you have an early flight you have to spend a night at the airport with no convenient hotel on the spot, at least in Munich the trains out to the airport start at about 4:30 am!

IMHO, the public transport system always looks good in sparsely / moderately populated cities
like most German cities are. The minute population shoots to sardine tin levels, things pretty much start going downhill.
e.g. London(?), Mumbai, Tokyo etc.

For all those who rant about the S-Bahn, may I present the local train system in Mumbai.
Trains run roughly once every 3 minutes throughout the day and people still end up commuting like this !



Here's a pic of guards stuffing people in a Tokyo train so the doors can close !

A thing I found fascinating on my trip to Paris in 2005 is that Paris shut down its whole metro system at 12:30 am, weekends included. I squeezed onto the very last train almost everyday.
Wow... Paris, the huge capital city, shuts down its system at shortly past midnight, and Munich offers you subway service until 2:30 am weekends?

Well, not anymore, 1 or 2 years ago Paris at last introduced longer late evening service on weekends...

I realised again today why i hate public transport and much prefer a car to travel in.

Was sat on the S-bahn this morning for about 30 mins opposite a long haired twat with badly fitted ear plugs having to listen to his choice of thrash metal.

It's a totally crap way to travel.

Especially if you don't have the guts to ask him to turn it down. I do and generally get positive results. If the guy just grins and doesn't lower the volume you can always add, "Oh, you're already deaf, never mind".