Talk:Intercity buses in Germany

link to German WV

the corresponding article in the German WV would be http://de.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Fernbusse_in_Deutschland141.30.210.129 19:41, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Dein Bus maybe out soon?

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/deinbusde-in-der-insolvenz-ueberrollt-von-der-konkurrenz-1.2211664 http://www.zeit.de/mobilitaet/2014-11/deinbus-insolvenz several German media are reporting a decflaration of insolvency being filed with the courts, however reportedly the buses will continue running for now. However, they also say that if the company doesn't acquire new money soon, it will go bust.141.30.210.129 11:40, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

For the time being DEINBUS will be able to continue operations: https://www.deinbus.de/presse/PM_2014-12-23-DeinBus.de_Weihnachtswunder.pdf Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:52, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

usable

What does this article still lack in order to be considered usable?Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:30, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I think there is enough for usable status. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:01, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Unless somebody disagrees I will than go ahead and change the box at the end of the article, by tomorrow or so.Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:54, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

So I just (belatedly) went ahead and usabled it ;-)Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:44, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Links from city /region articles

Imho this article as well as those we link to from could benefit if we put links in them. e.g. the article on Frankfurt could do with a link to this article, which would at the same time boost readership of this article and the up to dateness of the other one. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Move /rename

I know I wrote the title of the article myself, but it might be time to consider moving it, as the title seems a little long and inelegant. The problem is, that we should find a title that makes the difference to public local buses clear enough for travellers not to be confused. What about these proposals:

• Intercity buses in Germany
• Domestic buses in Germany
• Private bus lines in Germany

Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:07, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

"Intercity buses in Germany" sounds good. ϒpsilon (talk) 13:10, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Texugo (talk) 13:13, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we can go ahead and move the article now. Only problem is: I don't know how that is done. Could somebody please either do that for me or tell me how to do it? Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:10, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Hobbitschuster, to the right of the Edit button there's a button called "More". Move the cursor over it and it'll open a "menu" of one item, which is "Move". Click and fill in the new name, OK, and it's moved! :) ϒpsilon (talk) 17:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It's done. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Deutsche Bahn responds to long distance bus competition

Swept in from the pub

As you may or may not be aware, there are since about 2012/2013 a number of domestic bus lines in Germany. This has led to a huge decrease in Deutsche Bahn ridership, especially in the long distance market. Now how is this relevant for travelers? Bear with me... Deutsche Bahn now announced that in the coming years (they speak of "by 2030") they will make huge investments in infrastructure and provide better service for places that have been "disconnected" from long distance train services. Here are two articles from railway gazette (the best English language source a quick hit of the googles gave me, it has been all over German press in the last couple of days, if you read German...) this one and this one. Just a heads up that the get in and get around sections of many articles on Germany will probably have to be updated a lot within the next five to fifteen years. Maybe we should also put it somewhere in our travel news or something like that. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! Let's keep this in mind and add the information when the changes actually happen :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:08, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Ok. There is also a new route linking Berlin and Munich in about 4 hours end to end via Erfurt and Leipzig / Halle which is already mentioned as "soon to be opening" and while not yet fully operational will probably affect service on long distance routes in the east and center of Germany. Hobbitschuster (talk) 09:09, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

In addition to the above-mentioned, some of the changes that happened or will happen manifest themselves now mostly in construction which means delays and reroutings in the short term... In other news, the "Normalpreis" has been renamed "Flexpreis", there is no surcharge for the ICE Sprinter (and there are more Sprinter routes) and free Wifi in second class is still not on the horizon... Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:07, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Pagebanner

What could we use as a pagebanner? A picture of a bus or bus-station would be the preferable option. However if at all possible it should be either not identifiable as a certain operator or various operators should be shown... Is there anything on commons that fits the bill? Hobbitschuster (talk) 12:04, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

To raise the issue again...

Maybe this as an image to make a banner from?

Or this?

Or this?

Well it seems there really is no decent picture, which might stem from the inherent ugliness of the common bus station... Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:22, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

The other challenge is not braking German laws on detailed photos of people. Will keep my out on when I am on the road, but is going to take some time to get a good photo. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:24, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks in advance. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:30, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

This one is a little bit company-specific, but it could do until we find something more neutral. Danapit (talk) 18:42, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

The problem with this image is that out of the three pictures in the article two are already of that company. And this would be three out of four... Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:47, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I totally understand the concern. There is quite a shortage of photos suitable for cropping to cover this topic. Perhaps we could think about exchanging some of the pictures in the article? There are some nice pictures of ADAC Postbus at commons which could be used as a lead image, for example. Or what about this one? --Danapit (talk) 07:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

This article does not have a lede

What do you think could be put in a lede? Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:05, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd keep it short and simple, taking some of the information from the Understand section. I just went ahead and made a start, feel free to replace or change as you like though! JuliasTravels (talk) 14:33, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

The lede sounds okay for now. Btw is there enough material to say something non-obvious about Intercity buses in Europe or something along those lines? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:59, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

A recent edit

What's up with that? Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:04, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

News concerning Intercity buses in Germany

Swept in from the pub

It has strangely not been picked up much even by German media (maybe they tried to do it in the equivalent of the "Friday night newsdump" slot), but Flixbus, already controlling well North of 70% of the German long distance bus market has announced that they'll buy up Postbus, until now their biggest competitor at something around 15% of the market. this is a German language press release of Postbus. Now the brand Postbus will continue to exist until October 31st of this year, with Flixbus to fully take over starting November 1st 2016. Flixbus has already announced that the Postbus name will be withdrawn and as it is mentioned in quite a few articles (ironically I added it a few days ago to some), I hope you can try and catch those instances. The main article will probably have to be rewritten as well. From a traveler's standpoint this whole thing will probably mean higher prices and worse service (Postbus has tried to distinguish itself by better service - apparently to no avail) and some routes previously served by two or more companies may now see reduced overall service. Is there a template in use for en-WV to alert when something becomes outdated? Because we can probably not delete Postbus already, but having them listed long after November should not happen too often either. On a related note, we should also see whether Meinfernbus is still mentioned in some places as that brand has already been withdrawn as well (the website still works, but its functionally a redirect to the Flixbus page). Megabus meanwhile has sold its non-UK network in Europe to Flixbus a month or so ago. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:46, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Search engines, aggregators and the likes

It is wikivoyage policy not to link to aggregator websites and this is mostly followed for airlines and hotel bookings and I would thus surmise that the same applies for buses (but do raise the issue in the Pub if you disagree), but we might wish to list some here on the talk page, regardless. One of the problems with listing aggregator websites is that it is not our place to judge which are the best and this is a rather volatile market (with pages that used to find good rates being overtaken by the desire to get a bigger cut of the price and so on) and we thus only link to primary websites, i.e. the bus operators themselves. That being said, we might list them here. I for one usually use http://www.busliniensuche.de which has the added benefit of also showing comparable train offers. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:28, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

I have viewed busliniensuche.de as (one of) the most popular and reliable intercity bus aggregator(s) for quite some time (that is, in relation to the few years of liberalisation of the bus market). As you have already said, it has the upside of also comparing the price of rail and lift offers. I am not sure how exactly their business is funded, but they do not seem to claim a share of the ticket prices. In view of the policy of WV:The traveller comes first, we should absolutely point to the advantages (and possibly downsides) of aggregator websites. As checking the official websites of each provider individually is tiresome, "lazy" users might otherwise end up just booking with the market leader (that will soon dominate the whole business anyway) without checking for alternatives. --RJFF (talk) 18:52, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

I see your point, but I also see the dangers of listing aggregators, but please raise the issue in the Travellers' Pub and/or the appropriate policy discussion page (don't ask me which one). Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Guide and FTT?

Yes, I know the "German spot" will probably already be taken for much of the foreseeable future, nonetheless, I would like to know - especially from non German editors - what's missing to get this to guide and FTT? @Ypsilon: @Ikan Kekek: and @Andrewssi2: ? Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:55, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

The article is probably not far away from guide status, though I managed to come up with some points. I feel there's a little too much statistics here and there (e.g. "In November 2016 the number of routes operated declined by 30% compared with the previous month. "). Is there something to be said about frequencies of departures as compared to trains? And do buses just drive along the Autobahn from big city 1 to big city 2, or can you also access mid-sized or smaller cities? Finally, maybe other "bus travel" articles include some aspects of bus travel that are not yet mentioned here. ϒpsilon (talk) 17:52, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

It's true, there is a bit too much statistics in here (though part of it is due to the market changing a lot with Flixbus basically taking over). As a general rule, Intercity buses run on the Autobahn. There are of course areas where no good Autobahn connection exists between two cities, but given that they are not allowed (but who's checkin', eh?) to carry people on distances shorter than 50 km, stops tend to be spaced a bit apart. That said, there are a bunch of places where DB does not send the "white trains" (IC and ICE) any more that do have Intercity bus service. Trains usually have hourly departures or at least a train every two hours; buses are usually much rarer with some routes having one departure each day. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Blablabus launches

Swept in from the pub

The German long distance bus market has been dominated by Flixbus for a while now. These days the French (?) Rideshare company Blablacar is launching their bus subsidiary Blablabus They aim to compensate their initially small route network by offering through ticketing with their existing rideshare service and have announced 99 cents tickets as a launch offer. We should update articles, especially intercity bus travel in Germany accordingly Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:31, 24 June 2019 (UTC)