Getting Around Eindhoven
Eindhoven is the largest city in North Brabant and the biggest Dutch city outside the Randstad, but its centre is compact and largely car-free, which makes it easy to navigate on foot. For the outskirts, surrounding villages and the airport, you'll rely on buses, bikes, trains and the occasional taxi. The city has no metro or tram network, so public transport here means rail and buses.
On Foot
The city centre is largely car-free and small enough to get around on foot. If your plans stay within the centre, walking is genuinely the simplest option. For anything beyond that — the outer districts or neighbouring towns — you'll want a bus or a rented bike.
Trains
Eindhoven Centraal is a major rail hub for the southeastern Netherlands, and most bus lines in the city start and end there, so the station doubles as the main interchange. NS trains connect Eindhoven with destinations across the country, including Tilburg, Breda, Rotterdam, Delft and The Hague; 's-Hertogenbosch, Utrecht and Amsterdam (including Schiphol Airport); Helmond and Venlo; and Weert, Roermond, Sittard and Maastricht/Heerlen. Services to major Dutch cities are frequent, with trains to 's-Hertogenbosch and Amsterdam running roughly every ten minutes.
There is a secondary station, Eindhoven Strijp-S, next to the former Philips business park of the same name. It is served by regional trains and is one of the last railway stations in the Netherlands accessible only by stairs.
To enter or walk through Eindhoven Centraal you pass through check-in gates payable by debit or credit card. If you enter and leave within an hour, no money is deducted, so you have time to buy something or rest inside the station. When exiting on the south side, turn around and look back at the building: architect Koen van der Gaast designed the 1956 station to resemble a Philips radio of that era, and it holds national heritage status.
Coming from Germany, a common route is the RE13 to Venlo and then an InterCity onward to Eindhoven. European Sleeper also runs night trains to Eindhoven from Italy, Switzerland and Germany on selected days.
Buses
Eindhoven's bus network is built around the train station, where most lines begin and end. You pay by tapping your debit or credit card when entering and exiting the bus (the OVpay system). It is also still possible to buy a single-use paper ticket from the bus driver with a debit card — one option covers a single trip with no transfers, and another gives unlimited trips after 9 AM. You can plan trips in advance using the trip advisor of Hermes, the bus company serving the Eindhoven region.
Long-distance coaches also serve the city: FlixBus and RegioJet run from the intercity bus station to destinations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Poland, Serbia, Hungary and Romania. Public express bus lines to nearby towns leave from the back of the train station and include connections to Helmond, 's-Hertogenbosch and Weert — though trains are generally the more convenient way to reach those places unless you want to stop in one of the villages along the way.
Taxis and Ride-Hailing
Ride-hailing is available, with Uber and Bolt covering Eindhoven Airport. For other journeys around the city, taxis and ride-hailing are a straightforward fallback when buses have stopped running or when you're carrying luggage.
Bicycles
Cycling is a natural way to cover the distances between the centre and the outer districts. You can rent a bicycle from Velorent, which is open Tuesday to Sunday.
For short trips, the umob app is the exclusive app in the city for shared bicycles, e-bikes, cargo bikes and e-mopeds. Through it you can rent bikes and e-bikes from Dott, and a day pass lets you take multiple rides of up to 30 minutes each. Bikes can be unlocked and returned anywhere in the service area, though at busy locations they may only be parked at official hubs. E-cargo bikes are also available in some locations from Cargor.
Several bicycle highways toward Eindhoven are partly finished, allowing faster cycling from neighbouring cities such as Best, Boxtel, Vught, 's-Hertogenbosch, Valkenswaard, Helmond and Veldhoven.
Arriving by Air
Eindhoven Airport sits just outside the city and is the Netherlands' second busiest airport by number of flights, behind only Amsterdam Schiphol. It is mostly served by low-cost carriers such as Ryanair, Transavia and Wizzair, along with holiday charter specialists, with the most flights arriving from destinations around the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe. The airport operates daily from early morning until around midnight.
The airport is connected to the city and its main train station by two bus lines, 400 and 401, which alternate throughout the day and provide a ride of about 20 minutes between the airport and the train station, roughly every 10 minutes during the daytime. There is no bus service between midnight and 06:00. Ticket prices depend on how you buy: checking in and out inside the bus with a credit or debit card or an NFC smartphone is the cheapest option, buying from the bus driver costs more, and buying from the ticket machine in the airport or at the airport bus station costs the most. Uber and Bolt also cover the airport.
If you fly into Amsterdam Airport Schiphol instead, NS runs an Intercity train from the airport to Eindhoven station roughly every 15 minutes, taking around 1½ hours. Some departures are direct and others require a change at Utrecht Centraal, which is almost always cross-platform; the cost is the same and the travel time only slightly longer. During disruptions or track maintenance, changing at Rotterdam Centraal may be an option, but those trains carry a surtax on top of the regular ticket, do not offer a cross-platform interchange, take longer, are less reliable and are usually busier. FlixBus also runs a few long-distance buses per day between Schiphol and Eindhoven, and KLM operates a bus service from Schiphol to Eindhoven Airport that can only be booked together with a KLM plane ticket — it cannot be booked on its own.
Several other airports — Düsseldorf International, Düsseldorf Weeze, Maastricht Aachen Airport, Rotterdam The Hague Airport and Brussels Airport — are all within about 1½ hours by car from Eindhoven. Public transport from Eindhoven to those airports takes considerably longer and requires multiple changes.
Arriving by Car
The A2 from Amsterdam to Maastricht passes Eindhoven to the west and south, connecting with the A58 to Tilburg and Breda and the A67/E34 from Venlo to Antwerp; the A50 links the city to Nijmegen and Zwolle. Local access from the highways is provided by the N2 "Randweg", which runs parallel to the A2 and A67 around Eindhoven — look for "Randweg N2" early when approaching to avoid substantial detours, or use an up-to-date navigation system.
As in all larger Dutch cities, parking in the city centre is quite expensive and the main streets can be jammed during rush hours. A Park & Ride service operates next to exit 31 of the N2, called P+R Meerhoven. From there, buses 401, 402 and 403 provide a frequent service to the city centre, running every 5 to 10 minutes, with return bus tickets to the centre available at a low cost per person if you also hold a parking ticket. Bus and parking tickets can be bought on-site at the machine using a debit or credit card.