| Map: | North rhine w VRR.svg |
| Map Alt: | Map of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia with the VRR area highlighted in red, corresponding to the cities and districts mentioned in the article text |
| Abbreviation: | VRR |
| Named After: | rivers Rhine and Ruhr |
| Formation: | VRR GmbH: ZV VRR: VRR AöR: |
| Dissolved: | VRR GmbH: |
| Type: | Statutory corporation |
| Status: | Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts |
| Headquarters: | Augustastraße 1 45879 Gelsenkirchen |
| Region: | Ruhr, Lower Rhine region, parts of the Rhine-Ruhr |
| Leader Title: | Vorstandssprecherin |
| Leader Name: | Gabriele Matz |
| Leader Title2: | Vorstand |
| Leader Name2: | José Luis Castrillo |
| Subsidiaries: | ZV VRR NVN ZV VRR FaIn-EB |
| Staff: | 182 |
| Staff Year: | 2019 |
| Website: | https://www.vrr.de |
The Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (pronounced as /de/), abbreviated VRR, is a public transport association (Verkehrsverbund) in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It covers most of the Ruhr area, as well as neighbouring parts of the Lower Rhine region, including Düsseldorf and thus large parts of the Rhine-Ruhr conurbation. It was founded on 1 January 1980, and is Europe’s largest body of such kind, covering an area of some with more than 7.8 million inhabitants, spanning as far as Dorsten in the north, Dortmund in the east, Langenfeld in the south, and Mönchengladbach and the Dutch border in the west.
The VRR is tasked with coordinating public transport in its area. This means the following:[1] [2] [3] [4]
Officially, 24 cities and districts form the Zweckverband VRR (ZV VRR), and an additional 2 districts the Nahverkehrs-Zweckverband Niederrhein (NVN). Together, the ZV VRR and the NVN form the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr AöR, which in addition cooperates with further transport companies.[5]
The member cities and districts of the Zweckverband VRR (ZV VRR) are:
The members of the Nahverkehrs-Zweckverband Niederrhein (NVN) are the districts of Kleve and Wesel.
The municipal and district councils send representatives to the two Zweckverband councils (Verbandsversammlung), which in turn elect the main decision making body, the administrative council (Verwaltungsrat) of the VRR AöR, and other committees. The Verwaltungsrat elects the administrative board of the VRR AöR (Vorstand), currently Gabriele Matz and José Luis Castrillo.[6]
In addition, there are departments within the VRR dealing with different matters, such as marketing or law. Two Land institutions are located within the VRR structure: Kompetenzcenter Digitalisierung NRW (KCD) and Kompetenzcenter Sicherheit (KCS).
Through the ZV VRR Eigenbetrieb Fahrzeuge und Infrastruktur (ZV VRR FaIn-EB), the VRR also buys and/or owns the rolling stock for some, but not all, of its PSO rail operations.
These above mentioned cities’ and districts’ and other associated transport companies thus operate under the VRR fare scheme:
The following rail companies operate S-Bahn or regional train services in the VRR area and accept VRR tickets:
With the introduction of the VRR in 1980 a new line numbering system for all bus, tram and Stadtbahn lines in the VRR area was introduced. The VRR was divided into ten regions, which were assigned a prefix digit (e.g. 4 for Dortmund), the first digit in the three-digit line number representing that prefix. The last two digits are the individual line number. These are the existing prefixes:
Stadtbahn lines are identified with the prefix "U" followed by the prefix and a one-digit identifiers. The prefixes 2, 5, 9 and 0 are not used for Stadtbahn lines. The Wuppertal Schwebebahn is officially line 60, but because it does not run underground, the U prefix is not used.
After the integration of the former Verkehrsgemeinschaft Niederrhein (VGN) area north of Duisburg, route numbers were unchanged, i.e. representing no prefix.
, the VRR network consists of 1098 lines, of which there are:
In 2004, roughly 1 billion trips were made by way of the VRR network.