Is it possible to buy tickets for one transport association on the territory of another?

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Accepted answer

No, it is not generally possible to buy ticket from a regional Verkehrsverbund on the territory of another Verkehrsverbund or municipial transportation provider, unless they have special agreements in place, or are in fact organized in a hierarchy.

For example, the VVO, the regional Verkehrsverbund of eastern Saxony, is in a sense the parent of the DVB, the municipial ÖPNV provider of Dresden. You can buy VVO tickets in Dresden although it's - strictly speaking - not their turf.

That said, according to Wikipedia, VRM and VRS seem to share a couple of munipialities, where both ticket systems are valid, so I would expect both tickets to be available at least at these stops. I couldn't find hard evidence for that, and I couldn't find any evidence for a special agreement. The VRS website has a FAQ entry for your question, which only mentions that tickets are available on their own territory.

I've sent your question to the VRM twitter account, but looking at their tweets, I'm not hopeful that I'll get an answer.

Upvote:2

If you travel with Deutsche Bahn, they offer a City mobil ticket:

City mobil is your local public transport ticket that you can easily add to your DB ticket purchase.

You have a choice between:

  • A single ticket that lets you travel from your destination station to your final destination (or vice versa from the place you are staying to the departure station)
  • A day ticket for an unlimited number of trips following the trip with the DB ticket The period of validity differs from place to place (in some cases longer than 24 hours) and is specified on the ticket.

The ticket is only available for a limited number of cities and only for part of the Verkehrsverbund, usually just the fare zone around the train station. (It is similar to the City-Ticket for customers with a BahnCard.)

Booking online, you can select it at the "Tickets & options" step.

Upvote:6

Congratulation! By digging into the world of public transport associations (Verkehrsverbünde) you have reached the Holy Grail of German ticketing art. I have a degree in transport system planning and am still struggling with this from time to time. (Having said that, Verkehrsbünde are seen as a main step in history of German public transport and make a lot of sense if you don't cross their borders.)

  • Ticket sales policies differ between the associations. Some offer online ticketing.
  • I am aware you wanted offline solutions. Anyway, you may want to consider to download the 'DB Navigator' app, which provides up to date travel information and - for some associations - ticketing options. You wouldn't need to print the ticket purchased through the app, but you need to create a profile on www.bahn.de first.
  • The VRM is a particularly slow Verkehrsverbund and doesn't provide online ticketing options.

So what are we left with?

  • As far as I know, you are not able to buy a Verkehrsverbundticket at a counter or machine outside of the association's territory.
  • You can buy tickets a couple of days in advance though.

That means that in your particular case you could do the following:

  • Before leaving Koblenz for Cologne, get offline VRM tickets for both traveling days.
  • Get the VRS tickets online.
  • Done.

You can save also the headache: The "Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket" is valid in regional trains all over Germany https://www.bahn.de/p/view/angebot/regio/qdl.shtml

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