Frankfurt am Main Transportation Tips by Nemorino Top 5 Page for this destination

Bus to Hahn

If you ever listen to the radio program A Prairie Home Companion, you may recall that they used to do funny sketches about a cut-rate Irish airline called Derry-Air.

Of course Derry-Air doesn't really exist, but if it did you can be sure it would fly in and out of a cut-rate German airport called Frankfurt-Hahn.

Since Hahn is about 120 kilometers west of Frankfurt (it's actually closer to Luxembourg than to Frankfurt, and it really ought to be called Trier-Hahn but then no one would fly there), the only sensible way to get there is by bus. The bus stop in Frankfurt is on the Stuttgarter Str. at the south side of Frankfurt Central Station.

As you can see, it has all the amenities. You even have the choice of sitting on the sidewalk or on your suitcase while waiting for them to open up the bus. The bus ride costs EUR 12.00 and takes about one hour and forty-five minutes.

Hahn, which by the way means rooster in German, is a village with 173 inhabitants. The airport there was originally a US airbase and was converted to a civil airport after the US air force no longer needed it.

Mode: TO

Phone: 0 65 43 / 5 01 90

Type: Bus

Website: http://omnibusse.bohr.de/routes/wtc/routes.php?action=detail&route_id=2&language=en

Grass instead of automobiles?

This is a sensational historic photo (I think) of a turning point in Frankfurt’s history (I hope). They are ripping out one block of a city street, for the purpose of enlarging a public park.

The street is Hammanstraße, between Vogtstraße and Fürstenbergerstraße, and the park is Holzhausenpark, one of Frankfurt’s most crowded parks whenever the weather is at all amenable.

Some conservative politicians tried to prevent this from being done. Their attitude is that even the slightest reduction in the amount of public space devoted to automobiles heralds the end of Western Civilization and All Moral Values, not to mention the German Economy and the Stability of the Euro. (They formulate it a bit differently, but that’s the drift of the argument.)

I'll check back in a couple weeks to see if they have really planted grass here.

Update: Yes, they have not only enlarged the park, but also put in two nice paths, for cyclists and pedestrians, complete with posts to keep the automobiles out. And they have even put up signs declaring this to be a "play park" in which no dogs are allowed, not even on leashes ("leads" to you), thus addressing another major problem that the users of this popular park have had for decades.
See the second photo for what it looks like now.

Mode: AROUND

Type: Other

Progress at Eschenheimer Tor

For four decades, following the building of Frankfurt's first subway line in the 1960s, this complicated intersection at Eschenheimer Tor was a pedestrians' and cyclists' nightmare. Pedestrians were forced to descend into the city's ugliest and most dangerous underground passageway. Cyclists had no safe way of getting through here in any direction, and most of us took other routes entirely, even if they were a lot longer.

Now, though, some progress has finally been made here. A street level crossing has been installed, with traffic lights that actually stop the cars occasionally so the rest of us can cross the street. And there are marked bicycle lanes for north- and southbound cyclists, in places where the politicians had always insisted it would be impossible to put them.

And guess what: traffic in the city has not ground to a halt, despite the dire warnings of the Chamber of Commerce and the conservative political parties -- one of which, the FDP, likes to refer to this sort of improvement as "pampering the cyclists".

Mode: AROUND

Type: Bicycle

Renovation of Frankfurt Central Station

Train service continues uninterrupted despite a huge renovation project which is now in progress to re-build the high glass-and-metal roof of the station. The roof had developed serious leaks in recent years, and was evidently not entirely safe though of course no one would admit to that.

Renovation of the roof started in 2002 and is scheduled to be finished in 2006.

The second photo shows what the renovation work looked like from the outside, namely from the south side of the station where the long-distance bus stops are located.

The third photo shows some of the progress that had been made inside the station by September 2005.

Mode: TO

Type: Train

Website: http://www.bahnsteighallen.de/

We waited thirty-five years for this!

From the photo, you might think this was just an ordinary pedestrian and bicycle crossing on an ordinary city street leading from an ordinary strip of city park to another ordinary strip of city park (which you can't see because it's behind my back).

Well, it is just that, but the extraordinary thing is that for thirty-five years (actually more like forty but I only moved here thirty-five years ago) our city fathers (and mothers, we've had a lady Lord Mayoress for years now) steadfastly refused to put in a crossing for us, for fear it would cause a ripple in the sacred flow of automobile traffic.

For all these years it was impossible for any of us to cross here without taking a huge detour and waiting for six (!) separate sets of traffic lights to change.

The new crossing is a great improvement since it links two sections of the strip of park known as the Anlagenring, which circles the city center where the old city wall once stood -- until Napoleon ordered it torn down.

And for me this new crossing is a big help because it is on the direct bicycle route from my home to two of the places where I teach.

Mode: AROUND

Type: Bicycle

Ferry from Höchst to Schwanheim

The best way to cross the Main River from Höchst, in the western part of Frankfurt, is to take the ferry over to Schwanheim.

Current operating times are Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. No service on Sunday or Monday.

Address: Höchster Schloßplatz 13

Mode: AROUND

Phone: (0 69) 30 34 86

Type: Ship/Boat

Frankfurt Central Station in 1901

This is what the Frankfurt Central Station looked like in 1901. The photo is on display at the Transportation Museum (DB-Museum) in Nürnberg, at the beginning of an exhibit on the history of German railroad stations.

The streetcars are bigger now, and the square in front of the station is much more cluttered, but the basic form of the station is still the same, after numerous phases of rebuilding and restoration.

Mode: TO

Type: Train

Frankfurt Central Station

The Central Station (Hauptbahnhof) in Frankfurt am Main has been here since 1888. It has 24 tracks at ground level, plus four underground tracks for the S-Bahn, numbered 101-104, and four for the U-Bahn which don't have numbers as far as I know.

It is now once again the largest railway station in Europe, since the Central Station in Leipzig was remodeled and lost several tracks in the process.

The white train in the photo is an ICE (InterCity Express) which has just crossed the bridge and is now approaching the station.

Mode: TO

Type: Train