Can you travel with a bicycle on the bus? This is a question that many cyclists and bike travelers ponder. We asked Matkahuolto to provide us with more details on where you can travel with a bicycle and bus combination, how to purchase a bicycle ticket, and how bikes are transported on buses.
How do you check if bicycle tickets are available for the route and bus departures you want?
Since 2021, it has been possible to purchase bicycle tickets directly from Matkahuolto's website for a large number of bus routes. Dozens of bus companies already utilize the opportunity to sell bicycle tickets through Matkahuolto's online store, with bicycle tickets available for over a thousand departures per week at best. More and more travelers opt to travel by bus with their bicycles, purchasing both the bus ticket and the bicycle ticket as an additional service online. The number of travelers using buses with bicycles is clearly on the rise.
Not all bus routes currently offer the option to purchase bicycle tickets in advance from the online store. The map view in the image displays the routes for which advance bicycle tickets are currently available. Although bicycle tickets cannot be purchased online for all routes, it is possible to bring a bicycle on board the bus as luggage if space is available. However, this must always be confirmed separately with the respective bus company.
In practice, you can purchase a space for your bicycle from the online store if the bus company offers bicycle tickets for that particular route. It's important to remember that using a bicycle ticket requires you to travel with your bicycle on the same departure, and if your journey includes multiple segments, you need to have a separate bicycle ticket for each segment. Matkahuolto's online service easily shows which departures have bicycle tickets available and how many tickets are left, indicated by a bicycle icon. You can also filter the timetable search to only display departures with bicycle tickets available (see the image below).
