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For Oslo in Norway you can go to ruter.no, punch in where you are and where you want to go. It then gives you options on how to get from point A to point B using various public transportation (and walking).

Is there a list of such services in other countries somewhere? In particular I'm curious to know if there is such a service for London, UK.

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In Poland there is very good site jakdojade.pl/Welcome.jsp?locale=en – psur Jan 10 at 19:59
For The Netherlands, a good website is 9292.nl/en# – Bernhard Jan 10 at 21:59
For a national site in Norway, consider rutebok.no. – gerrit Jan 10 at 22:14
Ok, if we're listing them here: for whole Finland: journey.fi; for Helsinki region: reittiopas.fi/en – Jonik Jan 10 at 22:28
@Jonik How does journey.fi compare to matkahuolto.fi? – gerrit Jan 10 at 22:43
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7 Answers

up vote 13 down vote

Europe

Below is an incomplete list of domestic public transportation planners. Those usually do not include international transportation, except trains in the case of Bahn.de. Intercity buses may or may not be included, depending on the country.

Austria

  • oebb.at. Similar to the German/Swiss example, although this is actually a railway company, it includes bus-stops. I don't know if it includes all public transportation.

Finland

  • Journey.fi Rail and bus connections, flights, and walking routes in whole Finland; also local transport connections for 21 cities.
  • Matkahuolto The official resource for buses. Includes the very nice option to not specify a date, and thus find out connections that run only on specific weekdays.
  • VR The official resource for all train connections.
  • Many cities have their own local transport journey planners: Helsinki region (Reittiopas.fi), Tampere, Turku, Oulu, ...

France

  • Voyages-sncf for trains only, nation-wide. They launch a new feature, quite interesting, for travel by train/plane/car across Europe (it compares them, it does not combine them). For urban transportation, every city has its own system. For Paris region, ViaNavigo is a helpful search engine.

Germany

Liechtenstein

  • lba.li In Liechtenstein there are no trains, but this site offers an queryable online schedule of the public bus system. This information is also available at sbb.ch.

Netherlands

  • 9292ov.nl. Includes all public transportation in the Netherlands and combines train, tram, bus and metro in a single itinerary.
  • ns.nl. Biggest train company in the Netherlands, also includes information from other railroad companies. This website also shows up-to-date information about delays.

Norway

  • rutebok.no. Unlike most domestic planners, this includes flights.
  • ruter.no the best for Oslo and surrounding area.

Poland

Portugal

  • www.cp.pt Trains all over the country except for the line crossing from Lisbon to Setubal which is operated by another company named Fertagus
  • Transporlis All transports in Lisbon metropolitan area

Russia

  • rzd.ru. Only trains, only in Russian, and you need to spell the place-names in Cyrillic too. Contains quite some trains not listed in HAFAS and also quite some international connections, perhaps also trains in several former Soviet republics — I don't know.

Spain

  • Renfe has a timetable search for trains only, and quite poorly implemented (e.g. at most one change included). From my own experience, Bahn.de and other HAFAS-based sites are often incomplete in Spain. There are many different local companies operating buses; some are included in Google Transit, but some are not; if you're going to a specific city, just try.

Sweden

Switzerland

  • sbb.ch. Provides schedules for train, bus, and ships all over Switzerland. Also each city is included.

UK

Fallback

  • For most trains in most of Europe, any HAFAS-based search engine such as Bahn.de, B-Rail, or several others. Note that HAFAS is not complete. See also this post on the risks with HAFAS.
  • For buses or cities in countries or destinations not listed above, maybe Google Transit works, but more often than not...
  • Try googling: journey planner <city> or journey planner <country>
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6  
Suggest we make this a community wiki answer, and people can add links for each country that they find? – Mark Mayo Jan 10 at 23:51
@MarkMayo Ok, done. – gerrit Jan 11 at 8:38
1  
@MarkMayo: How about we give this one a Europe title and have different CW answers for different chunks of the world. I just started an Australia one with the trip planner for Sydney... – hippietrail Jan 11 at 9:56
1  
@hippietrail Good idea. I did that and made the countries subtitles. – Svish Jan 11 at 11:27
up vote 6 down vote

You should try Google Maps. There you can enter a starting point and a destination, and Google Maps calculates routes for you. In most countries. respectively regions, public transport, private motorized traffic, and pedestrian routes are covered.

For example if you want to go from the Buckingham Palace to the Hardrock Cafe in the neighbourhood, Google Maps gives you the following route if you want to travel by car:

enter image description here

But if you're keen to walk, you get another route:

enter image description here

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4  
Google Maps' coverage of public transit networks varies. In Berlin, for example, it will only show you S-Bahn routes but nothing utilizing the U-Bahn, buses or trams. I find this actually worse then not providing any service as it may mislead someone to think that the S-Bahn is all that is available. – Kris Jan 10 at 14:42
That's true. However, Google Maps is the only service that I know that does that for multiple countries (at least rudimentary), as requested by the OP. – RoflcoptrException♦ Jan 10 at 14:43
1  
Yeah, that's my experience with Google Maps too. Good for maps, not very reliable for other stuff (unless you live in the US perhaps). Wasn't really after one service which covered multiple countries, but rather a somewhere which listed services for multiple countries. A site that could answer "I want to go to Berlin, what journey planner is good to use there?" – Svish Jan 10 at 19:31
Any system knowing HAFAS does multiple countries. For example, via bahn.de one can do trains and buses in Germany, Switzerland, and probably other countries do. – gerrit Jan 10 at 22:17
up vote 5 down vote

Is there a list of such services in other countries somewhere?

No, I don't think such a global list exists—at least anything that's comprehensive and up-to-date.

Instead, your best bet is to simply google:

journey planner <city>

This works for pretty much every city that has an online journey planner (also called route planner or trip planner). Including London.

Update: The answers to this question right here might be the best attempt at such list. :-) Still, they are far from comprehensive (there are many cities with a journey planner).

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1  
Yeah, seems like that is the way to go. And helps a lot to know that it's called a "journey planner", which I didn't really know until after asking this :p – Svish Jan 10 at 19:33
In many countries the journey planners are only available in the language of the country, and not in English. – gerrit Jan 10 at 22:14
In my experience, if one exists, it's usually available in English too. And even if not, you may still find it using English search terms (due to how search engines work). – Jonik Jan 10 at 22:26
up vote 5 down vote

North America

Google Transit offers global transit planning, with very thorough coverage of the U.S. and Canada— in fact, most of the participating agencies use Google in lieu of an independent service. It is accessible in Google Maps.

HopStop similarly provides trip planning for nearly all major and many minor cities in the U.S. and Canada, and offers iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps.

Canada

  • ViaRail for the train connections in the corridor between Quebec and Vancouver.
  • Greyhound for most bus connections (inter-city) west of Montreal, Orleans Express for some of Quebec and Maritime Bus for Atlantic provinces

Local

Mexico

Puerto Rico

USA

  • Amtrak for intercity trains in the USA.
  • Greyhound for most intercity bus connections.

Local

Most local and regional transit planners are provided by the operating agencies, and may not reflect all options. For example, commuter rail and rapid transit are often administered separately, and a trip planner for one service will often exclude other options.

Northeast South Midwest
  • Chicago - Goroo
  • Cincinnati - use Google Transit
  • Cleveland - use Google Transit
  • Columbus - use Google Transit
  • Detroit - use Google Transit
  • Indianapolis - use Google Transit
  • Kansas City - use Google Transit
  • Minneapolis/St. Paul - Metro Transit Trip Planner
  • St. Louis - use Google Transit
  • Tulsa - http://174.78.158.38/MILES
West
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up vote 4 down vote

Many public transport systems will have similar planners on their website, so that's a good place to start. eg, if you're in New York, the MTA website has a good route planner. For London, it's on the Transport for London website.

The other option that provides coverage for multiple cities in multiple countries is Google Maps which allows you to search for a trip via car, public transport, walking or bicycle - although the exact options will vary depending on the region/city. Google also has the ability to start or end a trip at "My Location" (just type that into the location box) and it will do it's best to automatically work out exactly where you are.

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up vote 4 down vote

Australia

Sydney

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up vote 3 down vote

To answer your query about transport planning for London, "Transport for London" (TfL) has an A to B journey planner available on their website:

http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/

You can set numerous options including date/time of travel, preferred mode of transport, mobility needs (impaired mobility?) and whether you prefer speed vs convenience (changes/walking distance).

Note that A and B can be a station, bus stop, postcode (known as zip code in some locations) or 'place of interest'.

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protected by Mark Mayo Jan 11 at 2:15

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