Darmstadt is relatively typical for German cities in terms of its transport system, with the car being the main, but not overwhelmingly dominant mode of transport.
Darmstadt is connected to the surrounding areas by a number of major roads, primarily accessing the areas to the north, west and south, including two Autobahn links crossing just west of the city as well as a Bundesstra�e also running north-south. The less settled areas east of the city in the Odenwald are accessed by several secondary roads.
Darmstadt Hauptbahnhof is its main station, located at the western end of the central city and connects to the rest of Germany and Europe with the Intercity-Express network. There is also a much-utilised line S 3 of the Rhine-Main S-Bahn north to Frankfurt am Main and a number of suburban stations on the Main-Neckar Railway and two less important local rail lines, the Rhine-Main Railway to the east and the Odenwald Railway to the east, including Darmstadt Nord station.
Darmstadt has no airport with scheduled passenger services, with the historic role of such an airport having long been taken over by the Frankfurt Airport nearby.
Darmstadt started in 1886 with a steam tram system, that later evolved (with a short period of also including trolleybuses from 1944 to 1963) into a 36.2 km network by 2001. Darmstadt had not scrapped this comparatively extensive network after World War II as many other cities did, though some links were decommissioned in the 1960s and 1970s and replaced by bus lines of which the city also has an extensive network.
However, the 2000s brought a major tram renaissance in Darmstadt (where further reduction of the system had by now long since been stopped), partly thought to have been due to new low-floor trams strongly increasing patronage. A major new line was built to the Darmstadt-Kranichstein suburb, and track duplication and extension in Darmstadt-Arheilgen is ongoing as of 2010. A line to Weiterstadt, a
