How can I know my travel limits with a weekly or monthly public transport pass when purchased for a specific zone in Frankfurt?

Question

I was trying to understand all about the daily/weekly/monthly transportation pass in Frankfurt but there are a few things that are not clear to me. I will be staying near the Frankfurt central station (zone 50 i think ?) and would be travelling daily to Raunheim for sure. Apart from that, i will be randomly roaming around the city center a lot (mostly using trams). So to understand, let us take the zone 50 as example.

1. I just cannot ascertain the travel limits (the last station i can travel to) with my pass. I could find the maps with zones but they do not list the station limits.
2. What about when i want to travel beyond my pass limits ?
3. Any discounts associated with passes ? Like in museums or something ?

Answer 1

Up front: RMV is the public transportation provider in and around Frankfurt.

There is a detail map which shows the public transport zones superimposed on the stations and public transport lines in pale violet. Here's an index of all network plans of the RMV. Sometimes the Zone boundary is depicted as polygon instead of a boundary line - that's to mark areas where stations can be accessed with tickets from any adjacent zone, just like in a transfer area.

Besides just looking at the map, you can always find out about the involved zones by asking the official RMV tool, the Tarifauskunft. Here you can enter the stations you're starting from and going to and it'll tell you which zones are important in the relation and which Preisstufe, the tariff, of each type of ticket is needed to cover the fare.

So for going from Frankfurt Flughafen Regionalbahnhof to Mainz Hauptbahnhof you're looking at a single fare ticket of Preisstufe 4, involving the zones 5090 for the airport and 6500 for Mainz center. You can also choose from several types of time-based tickets, which are also valid for a set of zones beyond the chosen relation.

In that view, you can also see that there are extension tickets for several types of time-based tickets, called Anschlussfahrkarte. You can buy these if your base ticket, e.g. a ticket valid for an entire month, is not valid for the relevant zones, to extend the validity into these.

That said, the area covered by the RMV is huge. It's basically the entire metropol region around Frankfurt, covering multiple big cities. This means it's hard to digest the entire system from afar. When I go by RMV once a year, I always find it the easiest to enter my destination at a ticket machine and then just select the time validity I need for that relation. The machine takes care of the correct ticket configuration. If you spend a longer time in Frankfurt, consider investing in a time-based ticket with a validity covering all the zones you're going to regularly. When in doubt, go to a service desk, they are prepared to deal with complicated requests, too, and generally are friendly.

About the discounts, I only know about a special offer called the Frankfurt Card which is a 1 or 2 day ticket valid for all Frankfurt zones (50*) offering some discounts in tourist attractions (20% off sightseeing tours, 50% off museums, freebies in some places).

Answer 2

On the page of RVM (Rhein-Main Verkehrsverbund) you can choose between several types of tickets. If you click on "Monatskarte" (month ticket) you will see a link to the stations you can travel to with this ticket.

If you want to travel beyond those limits, you will have to buy Anschlussfahrkarte (connecting ticket).

There are no any discounts to museums etc. as far as I know.

Answer 3

With the daily/weekly/monthly pass for Frankfurt <-> Raunheim you can travel at will in the zones 3700, 5000, 5090, 2645, 3570, 3670, 3675, 6567, 6593, 6649, 6664 as designated in the map below.
This includes notably the zone of "Groß-Gerau", Central Frankfurt and Frankfurt Airport as well as some stops in adjacent areas (of minor importance).

Source: VGF Frankfurt Zone Map

The zone codes above are further explained in more detail in the linked pdf here (in German).

This should answer the first part of your question. The second and third part are already covered in the great answer of @hiergiltdiestfu, how to figure out the zone limits for a particular journey is also covered in their answer and the one of @Neusser.

Answer 4

Your pass will have the start and end zones printed on it and is valid for travel between them. Each zone usually correlates to a municipality boundary which is not very useful for people not from the region, I concede.

To make this all easier to understand, each major zone (those number ends with two zeros) contains smaller zones (those that share the same first two numbers). So for example, Raunheim is located in the major zone 3700 and minor zone 3750. Note that there are a few exceptions this rule (notably Frankfurt Airport) but they shouldn't be relevant for you (as that big exception is covered by your pass anyway).

I will now assume you will buy a regular pass for travel between Frankfurt and Raunheim (without detours). As you can find out on the transport association's homepage such a pass will be valid in the following zones:

3700, 5000, 5090, 2645, 3570, 3670, 3675, 6567, 6593, 6649, 6664

That corresponds to the following whole municipalities (only first column filled out), parts of municipalities (two columns filled out) and stops only (three columns filled out):

To find out in which zone a stop is located you can check the list of zones which contains the municipality (Gemeinde), district (Ortsteil) and zone number (Zielnummer). The municipality is usually part of the stop's name and where relevant (often) the district, too. Note that your pass also needs to be valid for all intermediate stops. You can usually check this by looking at the zone map (complex 5MB PDF).

To make this more clear, if the name of the station starts with "Frankfurt" your pass will cover that. ^{though I suspect someone will state a counterexample in the comments...}

I don't know any reliable and automated way to check whether a specific journey is covered by a pass. In doubt you should ask any public transport employee.

If you want to travel partly outside your pass boundary you can buy a cheaper onward ticket. You find the slightly complex instructions on how to obtain one at a ticket machine at the RMV homepage.

I have never heard of anyone offering rebate for pass holders.