It has come as a shock to many people whom I have known over the years that I have never learned to drive. Which may explain why I choose to live in major cities with good public transport systems (since 1994 München / Munich, Amsterdam, Köln / Cologne and Frankfurt).
The city of Frankfurt is relatively small (try Berlin if you want a comparison). The combination of the local S-Bahn services (run by the German national railway company), U-Bahn (local railway), trams and buses (all run by the city of Frankfurt) means that anywhere you wish to go is easily reached reasonably quickly. So when I was working in the north-western suburb of Schwalbach-am-Taunus, getting there and back did not absorb too much of my day (far less than if I had been sitting in a traffic jam on the Autobahn, I may add).
From where we now live it is a mere 5 minutes to the main railway station, 10 minutes to the city centre, 20-25 minutes to the university area of Bockenheim and 25-30 minutes to the airport. The S-Bahn service is well provided for with modern rolling stock and providing four trains an hour from here for most of the day either East or West (more during the rush hour and on Saturdays, fewer late in the evenings and on Sunday mornings).
Tickets? For the tourist or person on business go to the Frankfurt Tourist Information office at either the airport or the main railway station and get the appropriate period tickets. For residents to be, get to know the zone system. This can be something of an exercise. Frankfurt central area is zone 50, the neighbouring zones though are among others 51, 37 and 66! Then working out how long you need a ticket for usw ....
Then try using the potentially user hostile ticket machines on any station (easy for buying single tickets and hideously complicated, if you are not used to them, for anything else) for the ticket that you think that you require (it also gets interesting if you have a period ticket and need an additional ticket to go out of the zone). Best solution in not so busy hours is to go the RMV ticket centre on Hauptwache station in the centre of the city, and get them to sort out what you need.
The airport is one of Europe's busiest and there are controversial plans to expand it (good for business, bad for the people who live under the flight path - that includes the newly elected mayor, so maybe the expansion will not happen!). Frankfurt may not be Germany's major city, but it is the financial centre. Which may explain why having the major airport in the country makes some sense. There are of course historical reasons why Berlin does not have that honour, and as the plans to complete the brand new super-dooper airport in Berlin have hit the wall with the company responsible for the construction going bankrupt, it will still not rival Frankfurt for a few years.
As might be expected, the national railway service is excellent. The ICE trains can get you very quickly to other parts of the country (and back again!) very quickly and in comfort from both the main railway station and the airport, but advanced reservations are always advised as the demand is usually high. The international services are also excellent. Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam can be reached in under 4 hours for example, most destinations in Switzerland and Austria also have regular services. When I was working in Paris in 2008, it never crossed my mind to fly there, the train service saves a lot of hassle.
Around Frankfurt's main railway station there are a host of bus companies that serve a multitude of destinations in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe (notably Poland and the Balkans).
So anyway (apart from some initial hitches with ticketing!) getting round is remarkably easy. And who needs a car anyway?
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