Transportation

1. Water Transportation

The port of Hamburg is the biggest port in Germany that has access to the North Sea. The ports
of  Lübeck and Bremerhaven are also very big ocean ports in Germany.

Hamburg

 Lübeck

Bremerhaven

2. Ground Transportation

Railways:

• total: 40,826 km, including
• at least 14,253 km electrified and
• 14,768 km double- or multiple-tracked

Though Deutsche Bahn is a private company, the government holds all shares and therefore Deutsche Bahn can still be called a state-owned company. Since its reformation under private law in 1994, Deutsche Bahn AG (DB AG) no longer publishes details of the tracks it own.  There is also about 280 privately or locally owned railway companies which own an approximate 3,000 km to 4,000 km of the total tracks in Germany. 

Highways:

The volume of traffic in Germany, especially goods transportation, is at a very high level due to its central location in Europe. In the past few decades, much of the freight traffic has been shifting from rail roads to driving road.  Germany possesses one of the most dense road systems in the world. German motorways have no blanket speed limit, but posted limits are in place in many dangerous or congested stretches. Germany has approximately 650,000 km of roads, of which 231,000 km are non-local roads.The road network is extensively used with nearly 2 trillion kilometers traveled by car in 2005, in comparison to just 70 billion km traveled by rail and 35 billion km traveled by plane.

3. Air Transportation

Short distances and the extensive network of motorways and railways make airplanes noncompetitive for travel within Germany. Only about 1% of all distance travelled was by plane in 2002. But due to a decline in prices with the introduction of low-fares airlines, domestic air travel is becoming a lot more attractive. Frankfurt International Airport is Germany's largest airport and a major transportation hub in Europe. Frankfurt Airport ranks among the world's top ten airports. It is one of the airports with the largest number of international destinations served worldwide.

Airports — with paved runways:

• total: 320
  • over 3,047 m: 14
  • 2,438 to 3,047 m: 61
  • 1,524 to 2,437 m: 67
  • 914 to 1,523 m: 56
  • under 914 m: 122 (1999 est.)