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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Transit Tour - Dresden, Germany
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From a U.S. perspective, a city about the size of Tucson shouldn’t be able to pull off a dream transit system, but Dresden does. We set out to explore all public transit available in Dresden, starting at Dresden Hauptbahnhof and hopping straight into a tram network that’s frequent, citywide, and refreshingly simple. No “signature station” theatrics, no mystery routes, just service that shows up often enough that the city feels effortless without a car.
From the rebuilt historic center and the transportation museum, we ride out to the Grand Garden and stumble into one of the most legit miniature park railways we’ve ever seen. Then we shift into a bus transfer to the Elbe, a hillside ride on the Schwebebahn hanging monorail, and a funicular that slips through tunnels before dropping us back into the tram grid. We even squeeze in a tiny ferry crossing that runs like real transit, not a tourist gimmick.
To round it out, we test bike share along the river paths and finally give Dresden’s S-Bahn its turn, including how it connects to the airport and beyond the city. Along the way, we talk about what US cities could learn from Germany’s approach to frequency, basic-but-good stations, and building useful right-of-way without turning every detail into a budget crisis.
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Why Dresden Is Worth Testing
SPEAKER_01Dresden is Germany's twelfth largest city with a population of around 550,000 people. To draw some comparisons for the U.S. audience, it's similar in size to cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico, or Tucson, Arizona. Not exactly places that you'd think about when it comes to having a robust public transit network. Dresden, on the other hand, has quite a lot going for it. So let's jump into our recent trip to Dresden, where we rode every mode of transit the city has to offer. We are here at Dresden Hauptbenhof about to do Dresden in a day using only public transit. We arrived here yesterday from Berlin taking the IC train that connects the two cities.
SPEAKER_02I'm actually really excited to see Dresden. I have done transit in Berlin and Hamburg and Munich, so I'm really excited to see what a smaller city like Dresden has to offer.
SPEAKER_01And definitely stay tuned because there are a lot of unique features to the system here. We have a couple cool old historic things, such as a Schwebobahn, which is like a hanging monorail. We have a funicular, and hopefully we will be getting on a ferry at some point later today. So with all that being said, we are about to hop on a tram to connect us into the historic city center. It's amazing. Transit for backpacks.
Old Town, Museums, And Rebuilds
SPEAKER_02Alright, so we left the Dresden Hauptbahnhof and took the number seven tram over to get a little bit of breakfast right here in the city center of Dresden. Right now we're standing in front of the transportation museum, which we got to check out yesterday.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's really cool. Inside there are all sorts of different exhibits on everything from cars and car infrastructure to rail infrastructure, planes, boats, all sorts of it, all in there. There's also a really cool, pretty big model railway that we missed getting to actually see in action by like 20 minutes. So if you do come to do this in the future, if you're in Dresden, be there before 4 p.m. to catch uh the model railway. But I would say if you are into this sort of thing, which if you're watching this video, you probably are, it's worth the 12 euros to go and to check out that museum.
SPEAKER_02And it's located in the most beautiful part of Dresden in the historic town center. Uh, this has been just painstakingly rebuilt, brick after brick after brick, uh, to recreate the downtown after the firebombing in World War II.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this entire area, uh famously for obviously negative reasons here, was entirely leveled and uh uninhabitable basically. And yeah, it's it's really impressive to see what it looks like today. You if if you didn't know, you might expect that this is just what it was before. Um but yeah, again, like Chris said, fully, fully rebuilt. Um from here, we are going to hop on another tram to head towards kind of the main city park. Uh, in that park, there is a palace. There is an amazing miniature train, like kids' train, that I'm excited to show you guys. Uh, so we will catch a tram and head over there.
Trams To The Grand Garden
SPEAKER_01We boarded a number four tram at Theaterplatz and headed towards the park. If you haven't liked this video yet, consider doing so. It helps get the show to new people.
SPEAKER_02After leaving the Dresden City Center, we jumped on the number four tram and took that from the opera house all the way out to this beautiful park, which I think in German translates to like big garden park.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, very literal, direct, as the Germans like it. Yeah. Um, you have this lovely palace behind us in the center, and then you just have really big, beautiful gardens and trees and paths uh all surrounding. Uh the tram first, though, on the way over here, pretty smooth. So far, all the trams are pretty frequent. Some of the more frequent ones that I've seen so far seem like every seven minutes or so, a couple in the 10-minute range, 15, but there are just so many of them going by all the time.
SPEAKER_02And I also, we've talked about this a little bit off camera. I really appreciate their simplicity. It is a very simple system. All of the rail is for the most part on street level or over grass medians. Uh, all the stations are just a small platform about half a foot off of the ground, with of course the power system above. Everything just seems very well integrated into the city and smooth and seamless and simple.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I just wonder why we can not make it simple in the US.
SPEAKER_01We've been we've been dooming talking about our own home home uh project in Austin that uh for Project Connect being like it doesn't have to be that much more complicated than some of the stuff we're seeing here. This isn't a very big city. We're talking like, you know, the roughly 650,000 population in the city of Dresden, they have tram lines covering the whole thing. We should be able to do this in other places too. One other thing we noticed here in Dresden was that in some places the buses actually use the same right of way as the tram, which offers some easy transfers for folks. Although in some cases it does look like it can potentially cause backups. Also, a fun thing though, located in this park, is an amazing train system that runs through the park. We just walked by one of the stations. Uh, it's very legit for just like a park or like train.
SPEAKER_02I coming in here, I thought it was gonna be something similar to what we have in Austin or some U.S. parks. We have the Zilker Eagle in Austin, it's like a little kitty train that kind of. Houston has the fun one too. Yeah, Houston has one, but usually takes you in a little loop around a park and back. This is not that. This is this is that, but on another level. There are full stations with employees at each station. There are uh announcements that come through to tell you when the trains are going to arrive. There's a guy who comes out and like lowers the train arms over the level crossing. It's the most legit miniature train system I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's definitely very impressive. So uh if you're interested and want to check that out, definitely worth your time to come to this park too in general. Uh, so many of these German cities just do a phenomenal job with their parks. You've got great spaces for you know getting some ice cream or a cold drink in different areas. Uh, really accessible to the city via tram lines and buses on multiple sides of it. So uh definitely worth your time
The Park Train That Feels Real
SPEAKER_01interested. But from here, we're gonna explore the park a little bit more and then we're gonna hop on our first bus of the day and start to make our way towards some of those more unique transit modes that we talked about earlier. We've got a funicular and a Schwaba bond that we're gonna go uh start to make our way over there. There's a seamless transfer between the park train and the bus station right there.
Bus Ride To The Elbe
SPEAKER_01Just took the bus from the park. We are now on this lovely bridge over the El Bay River. The Schwababan and the funicular are on that side of the bridge. On this side of the bridge, we have a very nice neighborhood in the Schillerplotz area. I think we're gonna find some lunch and then venture our way up uh one of the two modes of transit to carry us up the hill.
SPEAKER_02I also just can't get over how beautiful this spot is around Dresden. Uh yeah, again, you have the river, but then like past the river, there's also like this beautiful old castle. I'm sort of blown away.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Cute neighborhoods, like the bridge, the river, the nature, the castles. Yeah. It's uh it's hard to beat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's just like Disneyland.
SPEAKER_01It's like Disney World. Epcot, but but the real thing. Look at that bus is going right
Schwebebahn Views Above The City
SPEAKER_01behind us.
SPEAKER_02We finished up a really nice lunch right next to the river, cross back over the bridge to check out the Schwebebahn.
SPEAKER_01And we are, as you can tell, now at the top of it. Very, very beautiful views above the city of Dresden. And if you've been watching the channel for a while and you are a hardcore supporter, you maybe have seen this on our Patreon. Uh, I did an episode probably six months ago about regional trains between Leipzig and Dresden. And uh in the extended episode for folks on Patreon, I took them to the top of this, and now everybody gets to come to the top. Democratization of uh of our content. So yes. Um we always do try to like to include little extra bonus things for YouTube members and Patreon members. So if you do want to support the show, that is a fun way to do so. Um but we're very I'm very excited to have Chris at the top of the snack because I I brought Jerry along with me for for that trip. Um, and yeah, I mean, this is just such a beautiful place and a really unique form of transit to get up here as well.
SPEAKER_02And it really kind of harkens back to the day that I was in uh Vuppertal and got to ride the Schwaban there, which there's a whole museum here that kind of tells you about this type of transit, why it was developed, and how the technology sort of came to be. Uh, and they actually talk about the one that is in Vuppertal outside of Cologne. So very cool that uh that you can experience this in two uh really beautiful places. Yes. We really wanted to investigate why they chose a Schwebaban for this neighborhood, and I think we figured it out. I made friends with the cat. That was what I was doing while Lewis was doing the hard work of uh filming.
SPEAKER_01Yes, getting the shot of the Shwebaban that we we walked down so that we could get that shot instead of it's really hot out if you can't tell.
SPEAKER_02So uh we uh we walked from the Shwababan uh base station over to the funicular, um, which was much longer than I expected it to be. Uh and very, very cool.
SPEAKER_01And uh I unfortunately this is not on camera, but I almost got got stuck in the door. I wasn't paying attention, and Chris was inside and I was outside, the door started closing. I started to go in. I did make it, but it wasn't it wasn't pretty. You got a little squished. Yeah, it wasn't pretty. Um goes through two tunnels on the way up, which was pretty unique. Cool.
Funicular Tunnels And Back To Trams
SPEAKER_01From here, we are gonna walk through the neighborhood a bit, and we are going to catch a tram that is going to start to have us make our way back towards uh the center of Dressen. From the top of the funicular, we walked five or ten minutes through a neighborhood to the tram.
Ferry Crossing And Beer Garden Reward
SPEAKER_01This tram runs well outside of the city center, connecting the neighborhood of Bulau on the outskirts of the city. Alright, so we just got off of the 11 tram and we are walking our way back down towards the river. Top on uh what seems like it's gonna be a very short little ferry ride.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we were on the tram and uh as we approached the stop, it actually called out that this was a stop for the ferry, so that makes it feel a little less like a novelty.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we'll uh we'll pop on and soon be on the other side of the Elba.
SPEAKER_02We're also hoping that uh we don't melt between here and there. Yes. Uh or else I'm gonna be jumping off the ferry into the river.
SPEAKER_01This is fair, but we'll be rewarded with a beer garden on the other side. So this is probably the shortest ferry I have ever been on, crossing directly over the river on a small boat. The whole operation from docking to checking tickets and driving was done by just one person, which was pretty impressive. And the frequency is every 10 minutes throughout the day.
Bike Share Along The River Paths
SPEAKER_01Alright, Chris is unlocking a bike here. I got a bike here. We just finished up some drinks at the beer garden. That's uh we're testing out Dresden's bike share system. Kind of cool if you purchase a Deutschland ticket through the transit agency here in Dresden. You actually get to use these bikes for free, which is pretty awesome. Um, I unfortunately don't get to because I purchased mine through the transit agency in Yienna where I live. Um, but if you purchase directly through DVB, I believe is what it's called, uh you'd get to use them for free. Uh still pretty affordable otherwise, though. It's a euro for 15 minutes and then it goes up a little bit afterwards. So uh we'll ride along the river and take you along with us. It has been very, very hot on our trip here, like comparable to Texas. I was actually against it at first, if I'm being honest, because of the heat, but Chris was like, these bike share bikes were sitting right outside of the beer garden. We had to take an opportunity to test them out, and I'm glad we did. Uh the city has great bike paths running along both sides of the river. Uh, there's decent bike infrastructure kind of spread throughout the city, but in Germany so far, from what I've been able to tell, just broadly traveling, it's a lot less like dedicated bike lanes everywhere, and a lot more just like everybody's moving a little bit slower, so it's just kind of safer. In some areas, there are those dedicated lanes, and we were on a couple of them on this, but it's generally like a mix of sidewalks, paths, and mixing with traffic as well. And a lot of cobblestones. And yes, the the cobblestones take some getting used to from from here here and there.
SPEAKER_02Um but uh one thing that has been missing so far in our episode, which is strange for it being Europe, and also specifically a German episode, is the S Bahn.
Dresden’s S-Bahn And Regional Rail Links
SPEAKER_01Yes, so Leipzig does have an S-Bahn network. It's not as big as Leipzig.
SPEAKER_02Leipzig does, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Durezden does have uh an S-bonn network. It's not quite as big as some of the other cities, uh, but given its size, it's nice that it has one at all. The network is comprised of four different lines that kind of spider across the city. Um, in addition, there are also a whole bunch of different regional rail lines that pass through Dresden as well. Uh, a couple of the notable places that the S-Bahn takes you to, though, you can get to the Dresden Airport via the S-Bahn, as well as a couple of regional trains that go there. Um, one that's pretty cool though is access to the city of Bad Schandau, which is kind of the entry point to the uh Saxon-Switzerland uh national park, basically, which is a really pretty area. I have not been in yet. I have plans to go this fall, but pretty cool to be able to hop on an S-Bahn and in about a half an hour be at the entrance to a national park using only public transit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Very nice.
What US Cities Miss About Stations
SPEAKER_02We try really hard not to make always make comparisons to the US and how transit in Europe is so much better. However, we do draw a lot of comparisons, and one comparison that we do want to make here is the difference between train stations in the US and here. And one thing that we have kind of remarked on a few times in the episode has been uh that there is a central Hopbenhof here that is a massive, huge station, especially for US standards. I think on European standards, it's probably mid-sized station. But if you were to place it any in any US city, it would just be this massive station. And not only does Dresden have one of those, but we are currently standing in the uh secondary secondary in the newer part of the city, which is just maybe not as big, but still quite a large station. And if you plop this anywhere in the US, it would be very impressive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for context, I mean this has, I believe, eight or ten different tracks in it. Dresden Hauptmanhof, I believe, has 14 sets of track in them. Uh and yeah, I mean, outside of New York and Boston, maybe a handful of others, you're really not gonna find train stations of that magnitude.
SPEAKER_02And we're talking about Dresden uh also being a city of around 600,000 people as well. Um, so there's a lot of comparisons we can make to the US of comparable cities. Yes.
SPEAKER_01From here, we are going to hop on the S-Bahn. We're not gonna take it too far, but we're gonna ride back towards the city center to Dresden, Halpenhoff.
Takeaways On Frequency And Simplicity
SPEAKER_01Alright, so we just took the S-Bahn to Freiburgerstrasse. This is going to be our last stop of the day. We have officially ridden the S Bahn, we've ridden several trams, we rode a ferry, we rode bikes, we rode a bus. Also, funicular, I can't say it. A hanging monorail. Yes. And overall, I mean, I'm curious your thoughts. I've been here once before, but the time I was here before, I was generally impressed, and I was impressed again today.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely impressed. I think what I love the most about the system here, and what seems to be the case in a lot of German cities, is that when you do things like tramways, these streetcars, like it doesn't have to be complicated. You can implement a really wide spread, full coverage system for really it doesn't seem like it should be that much money. Um, and I think if we could try to adopt more of the German model for some of our transit in the US, maybe that is the lesson that I have learned or to are taking away from from Dresden that we can just sort of apply a similar technique.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think like we yeah, we we we got into all sorts of stuff today, just like yeah, when we were talking when the camera wasn't on, of just like being frustrated about how much money we're spending on some of this stuff. When it's like some of these stations don't need to be as overdone as they are and all this sort of thing. You know, the right-of-ways while you should be fighting for dedicated right-of-way as much as you can, having some areas where it's shared briefly is not the end of the world always, uh especially in a world where we're kind of having to like take what we can get at this point as far as transit in the US can go. But um, yeah. Uh something else I think is worth noting too is like some of the levels of frequency on a lot of the stuff was pretty high, especially for being in a smaller city. I mean, a lot of the bus routes were still running on every 10-minute frequencies throughout the day. The trams were running on every 10-minute frequencies or better throughout the day in a lot of cases, uh, which makes a huge impact and makes all of these things feasible to not need to worry about ever having a car.
SPEAKER_02Even the small little uh miniature train in the park had about a 10-minute frequency. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Similar to a lot of German cities, and especially if you go back and watch our Berlin episode, we do talk about it.
Tickets, Apps, And The Deutschlandticket
SPEAKER_02The fare system is sort of on an honors system. Uh, you do need to purchase a ticket, and here they do have an app version, or you can buy a physical ticket from the card. If you're an American visitor or at least not from the European Union, there's a little bit of a complication. It is very hard to get the app to work with an address that is not part of the EU. I ran into that problem and was able to uh resolve that by buying a physical ticket, but unfortunately could not use the app.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I will say that while while you should be able to put in a foreign address into the app, uh it was actually the easiest buying a ticket process I've ever seen. There was literally one button. Yeah, you press which thing you want, and then it was like, okay, tap your card. And then it has tab to pay. Also, and this was not from like a random machine, it was actually on the tram itself. So very, very simple. Yeah. Um, and then for me, again, we covered this in Berlin, so I won't get into it. But uh I have the Deutschland ticket, so that covers uh public transit across all of Germany in any uh city, as well as regional trains uh going through. So that gets covered for folks who are paying for that monthly.
SPEAKER_02And overall, uh my ticket was around nine euros, which kind of sounds high at first, but for the full day, we have ridden so many trams and trains and using uh the ferry, all of that was covered under that single ticket. Um, so really not too bad of a deal.
SPEAKER_01No, and especially for like what you get. I think when we think of like, oh, that feels expensive, like that might feel expensive in other cities we visited when you're kind of having to like really work hard to be able to navigate to some of these places. But when everything generally comes on time and it's pretty frequent and you're not out like waiting too long for it, nine bucks, you know, if we were to Uber everywhere, that'd be a lot of money in comparison. So uh, and it wouldn't have even really been faster in a lot of cases, I don't think. So um definitely worth uh thinking
Where We Travel Next And How To Help
SPEAKER_01about that.
SPEAKER_02But if you have ideas for other episodes that we should be doing internationally, please let us know. This is our uh fourth trip together internationally. Uh we have done Vienna and Munich and Zurich all in one uh big push. So those are all separate episodes you should go check out. We've also done Paris, uh, and now we are uh have done Berlin and here in Dresden, so our third city.
SPEAKER_01Yes, so definitely go check those out. We've also done like 12 or 15 US cities as well. Those are all together in one playlist. You can go check them all out. Uh, they're a lot of fun. Um, thank you all so much for watching these two episodes from Berlin and Dresden. Uh, we had a lot of fun making them. We'd like to continue to do more of this. So if you want to support the show, the best ways to do so are to uh become a member on YouTube, check out our Patreon, check out the merch store, buy us a coffee, all of that good sort of stuff uh is down below. You can also just share an episode with a friend who you think might be interested in this sort of thing. That helps us get the show to new people. But with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit tangents Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00I'm saving that do public transit, wherever we're set. Watch me go.