What capital has the worst public transit and why?
August 17, 2025
Because I feel like we spend a lot of time talking about the better ones, while the worse ones don't get as much attention đ
21 comments
Never been, but heard it’s Rome, from multiple accounts of people saying buses never show up
European capitals? My guess is Valetta. They do have buses taking you everywhere but bus stops are limited and still quite the walk from places worth visiting. A walk on a narrow sidewalk if you’re lucky.
I haven’t visited all the European capitals but it’s quite possibly Dublin, especially taking its
wealth/population into account. No metro and plenty of slow and costly buses which are hampered by congestion and sprawl. It’s quite like Auckland in that respect which isn’t surprising considering Ireland and NZ have both experienced similar growth pains in recent times.
Actually maybe a capital like Tirana or Podgorica might be worse though I’ve not been.
Absolutely Rome.
I live here, have for years and I love it. But the public transport sucks. Luckily I have a car.
The metro is fine, but it only does an X across the city so a lot of the city is not served by it.
There are trams which are largely ok but some lines donât pass often, and again, a lot of the city is not covered.
The busses are unreliable because of the traffic, so itâs impossible for them to stick to a reliable schedule, and it happens often that youâll wait forever and when it shows up itâs so full you canât get in.
I haven’t visited all European capitals, but I’m pretty sure Lisbon is a strong contender for this:
– the metro network has only added 4 new stations in the last 15 years, with two more expected to open next year, but we don’t know yet when the next expansion, with an additional four stations, will begin
– the bus network is now smaller than it was in the 2000s, with fewer, and shorter courses
But perhaps the most important of all: the waiting times are terrible, and they are not even regular. It happens too many times that when you’re at a busy metro station or bus stop in the morning or evening for the waiting time to be close to 10 minutes or more, which is unacceptable – if you have to commute at 9:00 or 18:30 and you just arrived from a train or another bus and you need to wait 10 minutes for the next vehicle, obviously a very large amount of people accumulates at the platform/stop. In the weekends and holidays the average waiting times are longer, but overall nowadays the weekday waiting times are like those at weekends 15-20 years ago, and in the weekend there are buses that only run every 20 minutes or more.
So yeah, if you need to go around Lisbon, don’t trust public transporation unless you have plenty of time. Of course you can get lucky and everything can go fine, but you just never know.
I hate to say it, but Dublin. It has two tram lines, but no metro, and no airport link from the tramlines.
Zagreb, especially if you ask the locals. They’ll tell you the public transport is so bad that they simply must commute by car. And then all the buses and trams get stuck in car traffic, which indeed makes Zagreb’s public transport inefficient and unreliable. Commuting by bus/tram from one side of the city to another can take more than 90 minutes.Â
ReykjavĂk only has buses and they cost like 6⏠to ride. Itâs a small city and the buses are reliable though.
Vilnius was sort of annoying too, buses only, needed a transit card that was a pain to reload online since there werenât any machines around to top it up on.
Technically the Vatican has none but I don’t think they need it
Vilnius has very disappointing public transit. Only bus/trollybus. No trams or metro. In fact, it is the only capital or city of its size in the region to not have a single tram line.
Great city otherwise
warsaw feels chaotic bucharest too buses late metros packed and zero trust in schedules
rome is another offender beautiful city terrible system constant strikes random delays and aging infrastructure
but honestly the âworstâ usually depends on what you value some cities have coverage but no reliability others have speed but zero comfort
Wellington. NZL pubic transport is built as if it was actively working AGAINST the population, which is saying something because Wellington public transport might be the best in New Zealand
Athens. If you donât live near a metro station (which you probably wonât because there are only 3 lines, serving very specific areas, and a few of them dangerous) then you must rely on the buses, which are really crammed. Depending on the region, the schedules might even be every 30 min-1 hour. This might also explain why the ticket is only 1,20⏠for all public transport, valid for 90 minutes.
How about ReykjavĂk?
No trains or light rail to speak of, only a bus system that has struggled to implement a decent payment system until very recently, has expensive fares and frequencies that leave a lot to be desired in some areas.
I was in Dublin in spring and amazed how much better the transit there was compared to ReykjavĂk
I believe Nicosia didnt even have posted bus schedules until a few years ago, and even now, they are more like recommendations.
If non-EU counts, then probably Tirana.
Throwing Nicosia into the mix. Just buses, expensive (âŹ3.50 one way), long wait times (30-60 minutes) between buses, with a weird system where they all radially go into the city centre and out from there. So going let’s say from West Nicosia to South Nicosia you need to eat the whole traffic go into the town centre, get off the bus, pay another âŹ3.50 and then wait for the bus to take you out of the city again.
All this in 40C heat for half the year.
Zagreb in Croatia is pretty bad. They only have old trams and buses but no subway, even though they have a population of 800k people.
Around 16:00h the people are crammed in these old smelly trams which drive like 15 km/h so it takes you at least half an hour to get home if you don’t live in the city center. And don’t try to get to the center with a car because it’s very confusing to navigate through the streets and the traffic is bad. Yikes…
Our public transport in Dublin is famously bad and we all love to travel around Europe and beyond and marvel at how much better transit systems are elsewhere. However, compared to Dublin? Rome is shockingly bad. At least Dublin is fairly walkable and quite safe for cyclists; especially given the fact it never gets extremely hot.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Only busus, no trolleys, trams, metros or suburban rail. In the same category: Reykjavik, Andorra la Vella, San Marino, Vaduz, Valletta, Nicosia, Vilnius, Podgorica, Tirana, Skopje, ChiĆinÄu, Tiraspol, Suchumi and Tsinvali.
If you ask the residents, every single one of them.
If you count commuting ***into*** the capital, then on expense alone London is pretty bad because it’s basically not subsidised at all and holy shit are peak-hour trains in the South-East hideously expensive, over-capacity, and prone to delays.
Once you’re inside London, though, which is probably what the question is more about, then its public transport is diverse, reliable, well-situated and honestly reasonably priced for the service. The actual answer then shifts to Rome (which, inversely, is very cheap and easy to commute into (if still crowded) and then is a pain in the arse to move around inside). Or at least it was when I spent a while there a decade back.
21 comments
Never been, but heard it’s Rome, from multiple accounts of people saying buses never show up
European capitals? My guess is Valetta. They do have buses taking you everywhere but bus stops are limited and still quite the walk from places worth visiting. A walk on a narrow sidewalk if you’re lucky.
I haven’t visited all the European capitals but it’s quite possibly Dublin, especially taking its
wealth/population into account. No metro and plenty of slow and costly buses which are hampered by congestion and sprawl. It’s quite like Auckland in that respect which isn’t surprising considering Ireland and NZ have both experienced similar growth pains in recent times.
Actually maybe a capital like Tirana or Podgorica might be worse though I’ve not been.
Absolutely Rome.
I live here, have for years and I love it. But the public transport sucks. Luckily I have a car.
The metro is fine, but it only does an X across the city so a lot of the city is not served by it.
There are trams which are largely ok but some lines donât pass often, and again, a lot of the city is not covered.
The busses are unreliable because of the traffic, so itâs impossible for them to stick to a reliable schedule, and it happens often that youâll wait forever and when it shows up itâs so full you canât get in.
I haven’t visited all European capitals, but I’m pretty sure Lisbon is a strong contender for this:
– the metro network has only added 4 new stations in the last 15 years, with two more expected to open next year, but we don’t know yet when the next expansion, with an additional four stations, will begin
– the bus network is now smaller than it was in the 2000s, with fewer, and shorter courses
But perhaps the most important of all: the waiting times are terrible, and they are not even regular. It happens too many times that when you’re at a busy metro station or bus stop in the morning or evening for the waiting time to be close to 10 minutes or more, which is unacceptable – if you have to commute at 9:00 or 18:30 and you just arrived from a train or another bus and you need to wait 10 minutes for the next vehicle, obviously a very large amount of people accumulates at the platform/stop. In the weekends and holidays the average waiting times are longer, but overall nowadays the weekday waiting times are like those at weekends 15-20 years ago, and in the weekend there are buses that only run every 20 minutes or more.
So yeah, if you need to go around Lisbon, don’t trust public transporation unless you have plenty of time. Of course you can get lucky and everything can go fine, but you just never know.
I hate to say it, but Dublin. It has two tram lines, but no metro, and no airport link from the tramlines.
Zagreb, especially if you ask the locals. They’ll tell you the public transport is so bad that they simply must commute by car. And then all the buses and trams get stuck in car traffic, which indeed makes Zagreb’s public transport inefficient and unreliable. Commuting by bus/tram from one side of the city to another can take more than 90 minutes.Â
ReykjavĂk only has buses and they cost like 6⏠to ride. Itâs a small city and the buses are reliable though.
Vilnius was sort of annoying too, buses only, needed a transit card that was a pain to reload online since there werenât any machines around to top it up on.
Technically the Vatican has none but I don’t think they need it
Vilnius has very disappointing public transit. Only bus/trollybus. No trams or metro. In fact, it is the only capital or city of its size in the region to not have a single tram line.
Great city otherwise
warsaw feels chaotic bucharest too buses late metros packed and zero trust in schedules
rome is another offender beautiful city terrible system constant strikes random delays and aging infrastructure
but honestly the âworstâ usually depends on what you value some cities have coverage but no reliability others have speed but zero comfort
Wellington. NZL pubic transport is built as if it was actively working AGAINST the population, which is saying something because Wellington public transport might be the best in New Zealand
Athens. If you donât live near a metro station (which you probably wonât because there are only 3 lines, serving very specific areas, and a few of them dangerous) then you must rely on the buses, which are really crammed. Depending on the region, the schedules might even be every 30 min-1 hour. This might also explain why the ticket is only 1,20⏠for all public transport, valid for 90 minutes.
How about ReykjavĂk?
No trains or light rail to speak of, only a bus system that has struggled to implement a decent payment system until very recently, has expensive fares and frequencies that leave a lot to be desired in some areas.
I was in Dublin in spring and amazed how much better the transit there was compared to ReykjavĂk
I believe Nicosia didnt even have posted bus schedules until a few years ago, and even now, they are more like recommendations.
If non-EU counts, then probably Tirana.
Throwing Nicosia into the mix. Just buses, expensive (âŹ3.50 one way), long wait times (30-60 minutes) between buses, with a weird system where they all radially go into the city centre and out from there. So going let’s say from West Nicosia to South Nicosia you need to eat the whole traffic go into the town centre, get off the bus, pay another âŹ3.50 and then wait for the bus to take you out of the city again.
All this in 40C heat for half the year.
Zagreb in Croatia is pretty bad. They only have old trams and buses but no subway, even though they have a population of 800k people.
Around 16:00h the people are crammed in these old smelly trams which drive like 15 km/h so it takes you at least half an hour to get home if you don’t live in the city center. And don’t try to get to the center with a car because it’s very confusing to navigate through the streets and the traffic is bad. Yikes…
Our public transport in Dublin is famously bad and we all love to travel around Europe and beyond and marvel at how much better transit systems are elsewhere. However, compared to Dublin? Rome is shockingly bad. At least Dublin is fairly walkable and quite safe for cyclists; especially given the fact it never gets extremely hot.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Only busus, no trolleys, trams, metros or suburban rail. In the same category: Reykjavik, Andorra la Vella, San Marino, Vaduz, Valletta, Nicosia, Vilnius, Podgorica, Tirana, Skopje, ChiĆinÄu, Tiraspol, Suchumi and Tsinvali.
If you ask the residents, every single one of them.
If you count commuting ***into*** the capital, then on expense alone London is pretty bad because it’s basically not subsidised at all and holy shit are peak-hour trains in the South-East hideously expensive, over-capacity, and prone to delays.
Once you’re inside London, though, which is probably what the question is more about, then its public transport is diverse, reliable, well-situated and honestly reasonably priced for the service. The actual answer then shifts to Rome (which, inversely, is very cheap and easy to commute into (if still crowded) and then is a pain in the arse to move around inside). Or at least it was when I spent a while there a decade back.