St Petersburg is a large city, so let us talk a bit about the public transport system here.

PODOROZHNIK transport card

PODOROZHNIK (ПОДОРОЖНИК) transport card is a universal card to pay for public transport in St. Petersburg. Different tickets can be attached to this card. You can buy and renew it in any subway station. The card itself costs 60 roubles (about 0.85 euro). More information about the card can be found on its website. Here are two of the most useful functions of it:

1. PODOROZHNIK card can be used as an online wallet that allows paying for the transport with appreciable discount.

2. You can attach time ticket to the card – it allows travelling as much as you wish by metro, trams, buses and trolley buses. The cost varies from 180 roubles (2.50 euro) for 1 day to 680 roubles (10 euro) for 7 days. Also, there are tickets for other time periods (2 days, 3 days etc). The exact cost you can find on the metro website.

Transport types

Metro

In St. Petersburg metro is the most useful way to travel. The metro system itself has 5 lines and works from 6 am till midnight. Trains are coming every 3 minutes. Full information about the timetable of the stations can be found on the metro website. To plan your trip you can use the interactive metro map or web service Yandex.Metro. When planning the trip, please, bear in mind that most of the stations (especially in the city centre) are very deep underground, so it can take from 3 to 5 minutes to get down/up by escalator.

A single trip can be paid by special tokens which are on sale in every metro station. The fare is 45 roubles (0.65 euro), you can pay by cash or card.

The cost of a single trip if you use PODOROZHNIK online wallet ranges from 36 to 32 roubles depending on the number of trips made during the prior 30 day period.

Also, you can pay by PayPass card directly when entering the metro – one of the wickets always has a built-in terminal (usually the closest to the service gates).

Trams, busses and trolley buses

St. Petersburg has an advanced above-ground transport system. Single trip fare is 40 roubles (0.60 euro), you can pay on board to the check-taker. Usually, the transport has a terminal for the PayPass card, but not all routes are equipped. If there is no check-taker on board, you can pay to the driver when leaving the transport.

If you use PODOROZHNIK online wallet the cost of the single trip varies between 31 and 27 roubles.

You can find the closest transport and build routs in the apps (for example Yandex.Transport or Moovit) or through web-services (Yandex.Maps or Google Maps).

Taxi buses

There are some small buses that belong to private companies. They usually duplicate the existing routes of public transport and move a little bit faster, but can have a risky driving style. Their route numbers start with the letter ‘K’ (for example K-10). The info about all taxi buses can be found on their webpage (available in Russian only) or via Moovit app. The cost of the single trip differs but usually it is 45 roubles (0.65 euro). You can pay by cash to the driver when entering the bus or use the PODOROZHNIK online-wallet (without any discounts). NOTE! Time tickets are not working for the taxi buses.