Warning strikes in public transportation kicked off in cities in nearly every German state on Friday morning at 3 am. They had already begun in the city of Magdeburg on Thursday.
The nationwide strikes are being organised by the Verdi trade union and are targeting local public transportation, called öffentlichen Personennahverkehr (ÖPNV) in German, meaning that buses, trams and U-bahn train services are severely disrupted in many places.
Here's where passengers around Germany should brace for disruptions on Friday and Saturday.
In Berlin Germany's largest local transport company, the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), has been on strike since 3 am.
Buses, trams and subways are to remain in their depots in the capital city for 48 hours, with traffic expected to resume at the start of operations on Sunday morning.
Passengers in the capital will face further disruptions from Friday evening at 10pm when work on the Ringbahn will see the S41 and S42 lines stopped between Neukölln and Ostkreuz. The S8, S9 and S85 will not run between Schöneweide and Ostkreuz during the same period.
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The work stoppage has also begun in the state of Hesse. Here strikes are affecting the cities of Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Giessen, Marburg, Offenbach and Kassel.
In Bavaria the two-day warning strike has begun in 13 cities: Munich, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Ingolstadt, Würzburg, Fürth, Bamberg, Passau, Landshut, Schwabach, Bayreuth, Schweinfurt and Dachau.
Also in North Rhine-Westphalia, the list of cities affected by the work stoppages is long. Among them are Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Oberhausen, Bonn, Hagen, Bielefeld and Münster.
In Saxony's five largest cities, buses and trains were largely at a standstill on Friday. Verdi has called on the employees of the municipal transport companies in Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz, Zwickau and Plauen to take a full-day walkout. In Leipzig, the strike is set to extend through Saturday.
In Hamburg the Hochbahn is on strike which affects bus and U-bahn traffic in the northern city from Friday at 3am until Sunday at 3am.
In the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, strikes were called off on Thursday, according to a report by Südwet Presse. Strikes had been expected in some cities, but have since been stalled, at least for the coming weekend as negotiations between the union and employers continue to develop.
There are also no strikes in Lower Saxony.
In most regions, the warning strikes will last 48 hours, until early Sunday morning. In some places local transport companies could still be affected by strikes on Sunday.
In Bremen, for example, warning strikes are announced until Monday night, but in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania only on Friday.
In a district in Saxony-Anhalt, strikes that kicked off on Thursday are set to last until Sunday, i.e. for four days.
The warning strikes are the second large-scale action in the current public transport collective bargaining round.
What is still running?
Where strikes are in effect, passengers should expect that local buses, trams and trains may not be running at all.
Deutsche Bahn services, however, should run as usual, meaning that public transport passengers can still use S-bahn lines as well as long-distance (ICE, IC and EC) and regional (RE and RB) trains.
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