Ten years after the Berlin Wall came down, the formerly severed links between the two halves of the city have been almost completely restored. At the same time, zoning and transport planners are developing the future structures of the major population centre of Berlin. Avoidance and shifting of transport, functional mixture and decentralised development which keep residential and industrial areas close together are the aims. As far as possible, the inner city should be kept free from through-traffic. The local public transport system is to be extended accordingly, and parking management is intended to reduce the volume of private passenger car traffic.

The Berlin public transport company (BVG) and the railway company Deutsche Bahn AG, with its branches CM Regio AG and S-Bahn (urban railway) Berlin GmbH are the companies which provide local public transport. The BVG, as the largest municipal transport company in Germany, maintains a transport network consisting of 9 underground routes totalling 150.8 kilometres, 28 tram lines with a total of 178.7 kilometres and 161 bus routes with 1888 kilometres. In 1998, the BVG transported 853 million passengers. The network of the S-Bahn urban railway is about 300 kilometres. The 14 urban railway routes transport about 920,000 people on weekdays.

After protracted negotiations, the federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg and the rural districts and towns of Brandenburg agreed on a joint transport enterprise, which came into force in April 1999. A consistent common system of fares, a timetable coordinated between about 50 transport companies and uniform tickets replaced the 16 different systems which previously existed.