How to Get to Poiana Brasov: Bus 20, Taxis & Lifts

Take city bus 20. It leaves Livada Postei in the middle of Brasov, climbs the 12 km to Poiana Brasov in about 25 minutes, runs roughly every half hour from 05:00 to 23:30, and a single ticket costs 5 lei. On Fridays the whole city network carries you for nothing. There’s no railway station in the resort, so everything else here’s a variation on that one bus.

The alternative goes wrong in a specific way. Poiana Brasov sits in a bowl at about 1,020 m with a fixed number of spaces, and the city hall is blunt: after ten or eleven in the morning, finding one is difficult to nearly impossible. A bus that drops you in the middle of the resort beats circling a full car park.

Bus 20 is the whole answer

Line 20 starts at Livada Postei, the transport hub on the edge of the old town. It calls at Warte on the way out, then Poiana Mica, then the resort. First bus around 05:00, last at 23:30, roughly half-hourly with the odd hourly gap.

A single urban ticket is 5 lei, valid 90 minutes on any urban line, and the tariff sheet names Poiana Brasov explicitly, so you’re not paying an excursion supplement to go up a mountain. Day passes cost 20 lei for a day, 50 for three, 90 for seven, but a return uphill is only 10 lei.

Paying is easy: the driver still sells tickets on line 20, and validators take a contactless bank card - though RATBV names only the Menarini buses, the SOR electrics and the Solaris trolleybuses for cards, so carry a small note.

Then the detail that rarely makes the guides: on Fridays the buses are free. Vinerea Verde, the city scheme, sits on the current tariff sheet: free travel every Friday across the municipal network, Poiana Brasov included, visitors as well as residents. Put the mountain day on a Friday if your trip has any give in it. Don’t assume it’s permanent: it’s a council programme, and the fare moved from 4 lei for 60 minutes in late 2024 to 5 lei for 90 minutes in May 2025.

The winter lines: 100 and the car park shuttle

A second bus solves a different problem. Line 100 runs from Brasov railway station through the centre to the Telecabina stop - the lift base, not the village - so arriving from Bucharest with a bag you skip the cross-town hop and the walk at the far end. A third, line 60, shuttles four stops from the 434-space Poiana Mica multi-storey to the gondola.

Both are winter lines, and last season they died on the same day. Line 100 came back on 2 January 2026 with five round trips, the first out of the station at 09:15 and the last back from the Telecabina at 18:00; line 60 started on 30 December 2025, every 35 minutes between 08:30 and 19:55. RATBV pulled the weekday service on both from 17 March 2026, with two or three passengers aboard: line 100 stopped outright, line 60 kept a weekend tail for the rest of the season. If you’re reading this in summer, don’t plan around either - check with RATBV and treat line 20 as the year-round bus.

Line 60’s famous free ride is narrower than it sounds. The tariff sheet gives it only to holders of a standard parking ticket or a seven-day stay pass from the Poiana Mica car park - park-and-ride, not a free bus. In ski season it’s still the cheapest sane way to arrive by car: 2.5 lei an hour below the resort, shuttle included.

Taxi, ride-hail and a booked transfer

Brasov taxis are metered; the regulated rate lands somewhere between about 2.2 and 3.5 lei per kilometre, the city’s published maximum and the operators’ own cards disagree, so read the sticker on the door. Martax, Tod Taxi and Bratax are the names on the ranks. Twelve kilometres uphill won’t ruin you, but it’s another order of money from 5 lei.

The apps work here too. Uber launched a ski-rack option on this leg back in December 2016; I can’t confirm it’s still offered, so check in the app and treat the launch fares as history. The quote comes before you accept, which matters at four in the afternoon when the mountain comes down at once.

A booked transfer is for the cases the meter can’t cover: land at Bucharest at 22:30 and nothing scheduled is getting you to a hotel in Poiana Brasov.

Driving up, and the parking problem

The drive is 12 km on Calea Poienii, out the west side of town, and takes about 20 to 25 minutes. That part is easy. Everything difficult about driving here happens once you arrive.

Public parking in the resort is 3 lei an hour or 24 lei for a full day, Monday to Saturday 08:00-20:00, at the meter or through the TPark app. Pay it: checks are frequent in winter and the fine is 500 to 1,000 lei. The public lots are Parcarea Mare with roughly 700 spaces, plus Sura Dacilor, Ruia and Favorit; the one everybody aims for, Sulinar, sits nearest the Postavarul Expres gondola and is both the smallest and almost always full.

Private lots are where it gets expensive: Bradu around 30 lei a day midweek and 50 to 100 at weekends and on holidays, Atomic about 5 lei an hour, Ana Hotels 15 lei per half hour, with local press reporting 20 lei an hour at peak. Take those as indicative: the city sets the 3-lei public tariff, nobody sets the private ones, and they float with demand.

There are two ways round it. The first is the Poiana Mica multi-storey, plus the line 60 shuttle in ski season. The second is the city hall’s own trick: come in from the Rasnov or Bran side rather than climbing out of Brasov, off the single road from town. Winter tyres are mandatory nationally whenever the road carries snow, ice or slush - the law is condition-based, not calendar-based - and this road gets all three for most of the winter; our driving in Romania guide has the rule, the rovinieta vignette and the fines.

Getting up the mountain: the gondola and two cable cars

Three aerial installations lift you up out of the resort, and their bottom stations all sit at the base of the Bradul slope, so the choice is simpler than the names suggest. The Postavarul Expres gondola is the workhorse: 2,145 m long, 661 m of climb, eight-person cabins, about 2,200 people an hour. Capra Neagra is the big-box cable car, 2,809 m and 737 m of climb in one 60-person car to about 1,775 m. Kanzel is the third, 2,449 m and 693 m. All three run 09:00 to 16:00.

If you’re not skiing, default to the gondola: small cabins leaving constantly clear a queue far better than one 60-person car that goes when full. Switch to Capra Neagra if the gondola queue has turned the corner, or for the valley through one big window.

The tariff is the same on all three: 40 lei up, 70 up and down, 40 for the descent only; children 6 to 12 pay 25, 40 and 25, under-sixes free with a family member. Bikers and paragliders pay their own rates outside ski season, 55 lei a ride or 180 for the day. One caveat: the city hall page carrying them is still headed “season 2025-2026”, so confirm at the window. Ski passes are separate - our Poiana Brasov skiing guide has those, the season and the pistes.

The pricing rewards a minute of thought. Up and down is 70 lei; up alone is 40. In summer the half you pay twice for is the half you would rather walk: the red-cross Drumul Rosu drops from the top station to the resort in an hour and a half to two hours. Ride up for 40, walk down, keep 30 lei. Steep enough to be a poor idea in the wet or with bad knees, but on a dry day it’s the best-value move here.

Outside the main season they don’t all run at once: the operator publishes a rota and opens one at a time, so in a spring or autumn week the gondola may be shut while Kanzel turns. Check what’s open on the day.

In peak weeks the bottleneck is the ticket window, not the cable. On 6 January 2025, in the school holidays, people queued about forty minutes at the cable car just to buy passes, and it ended in a fight that brought an ambulance and the gendarmes. That’s the extreme, but it tells you what early January looks like. Arrive for the 09:00 opening, or after two.

Flying in: Brasov-Ghimbav or Bucharest

Brasov has had its own airport at Ghimbav since June 2023, though the network is still thin. Airport and resort sit on opposite sides of Brasov, so you cross the town: about 25 km, three-quarters of an hour by car. By public transport it’s around an hour in two stages: the A1 airport bus to Livada Postei, then line 20 up the hill. The A1 runs hourly: RATBV extended it to 16 round trips from 10 September 2025, the last one out of Gara at 22:00 and the last back out of the airport at 23:00. RATBV set it at the same fare as its other routes, and the urban ticket is 5 lei valid 90 minutes on every urban line - so one ticket should cover both legs if you connect quickly. Check the time stamped on it.

So: hand luggage and a daytime landing, take the A1 and bus 20 on that single ticket, and budget a second if the wait at Livada Postei eats the 90 minutes. Ski bags, three of you, or a landing after that last 23:00 departure from the airport, and the chain stops being clever - book the transfer.

Most people still arrive through Bucharest, where the train is the sane choice: around thirty departures a day, about two and a quarter hours on the fastest InterCity, two and three-quarters to three on InterRegio, roughly 55 to 70 lei in second class. Then line 100 in winter, or Livada Postei and line 20 in any season. Driving takes 2.5 to 3 hours, much longer on a peak weekend, because there’s still no motorway over the Carpathians. Our Bucharest to Brasov guide compares them properly.

Walking up the old road

You can also walk, and in summer it’s a genuinely good idea. The Drumul Vechi climbs from Pietrele lui Solomon on Brasov’s western edge to the resort in about 3.5 km, roughly an hour at a steady pace, gravelled and waymarked the whole way. That hour is a fit walker’s hour: if you’re not used to climbing, allow half as long again.

The version I’d recommend is the reverse: ride the bus up, spend the day on the mountain, walk the old road down in the late afternoon - kinder on the legs, and it drops you by the old town. Chain it with the lift trick above and a summer day on Postavaru costs 45 lei of transport, 40 on a Friday. Stay on the waymarks: this is bear country, and the Libearty sanctuary near Zarnesti is where you see one safely.

So what should you actually do?

Staying in Brasov, take bus 20 and stop thinking about it: 5 lei, twenty-five minutes, half-hourly, free on Fridays. Arriving by train in ski season, look for line 100 first, because it ends at the lift station rather than the village - and check it’s running. Group with ski bags: price a transfer. Driving in ski season: leave the car at Poiana Mica and take the shuttle instead of the crawl at Sulinar. Driving in summer, with line 100 off entirely and the shuttle a weekend service at best: be parked before ten, or leave the car in Brasov and ride the bus, as the city hall tells visitors to do.

Poiana Brasov works better as a day out from Brasov than as a base, precisely because that bus is so good. Our guide to things to do in Brasov covers the rest of the days, and the Sinaia guide picks it up down the Prahova valley.