Crossing the border on foot and by coach

Which crossings have a pedestrian lane, which take coaches, why the pedestrian queue behaves differently, and what to check when you travel without a car.

Without your own car the choice of crossings is narrower than it looks. Fewer than half the crossings have a pedestrian lane; roughly two thirds take coaches. You cannot simply drive to the border and walk across at any point: only the modes of traffic a crossing is open for are admitted.

The lists below are compiled from our register of crossings — the same data the crossing pages are built from. As of 14 August 2026, of the 37 crossings we cover, 18 have a pedestrian lane and 23 have a coach lane.

Where you can cross on foot

The Polish border — one crossing only:

• Shehyni – Medyka

This is worth knowing in advance. The other eight Polish crossings have no pedestrian traffic, and the nearest alternative on foot is a coach or a train.

The Slovak border:

• Uzhhorod – Vyšné Nemecké
• Malyi Bereznii – Ubla
• Mali Selmentsi – Velke Slemence — pedestrians and cyclists only; there is no vehicle traffic here at all

The Hungarian border — five crossings out of six:

• Luzhanka – Luzhanka
• Vilok – Tisabec
• Kosyno – Barabash
• Dzvinkove – Lonya
• Velyka Palad – Nodyhodosh

The Romanian border:

• Porubne – Siret
• Krasnoilsk – Vicovu de Sus
• Solotvyno – Sighetu Marmatiei
• Diakivtsi – Rakovets
• Orlivka – Isaccea

The Moldovan border:

• Mamalyha – Kriva
• Kelmentsi – Larga
• Sokyriany – Oknitsa
• Rososhany – Brichen

Where coaches run

There is a coach lane at nine Polish crossings, seven Moldovan, four Romanian, two Hungarian and one Slovak. In other words, 16 of the 23 coach-capable crossings are on the Polish and Moldovan borders.

The Polish border has the fullest coach coverage — a lane at all nine crossings: Yagodyn – Dorohusk, Krakivets – Korchova, Rava-Ruska – Khrebenne, Shehyni – Medyka, Ustyluh – Zosyn, Uhryniv – Dolgobychuv, Hrushiv – Budomezh, Nyzhankovychi – Malhowice, Smilnytsia – Krosstsenko.

On the Hungarian border coaches run through Chop (Tysa) – Zahony and Luzhanka; on the Slovak border only through Uzhhorod – Vyšné Nemecké. The full list with current waiting times is on each border page, where the coach row is shown separately from the car row.

Why the pedestrian queue behaves differently

Pedestrian traffic goes through a separate corridor. It involves no vehicle inspection — the longest and least predictable part of a car check. That is why the pedestrian queue at the same crossing can be three times shorter than the car queue.

Not always, though. The pedestrian corridor is narrow: at a small crossing a few dozen people arriving together create a queue that nothing can spread out, because there are no additional lanes. In the hours when scheduled coaches reach the border, the pedestrian queue jumps.

We calculate pedestrian and coach times with the same formula as cars, but with separate constants for each type. So the figures for different types on one page are not derived from one another: each row has its own source and its own calibration.

By coach: what drives the time

A coach is processed as a single unit, but its passengers are checked one by one. As a result, a coach's time depends weakly on the length of the car queue and strongly on how many coaches are ahead of it.

At the larger crossings scheduled carriers use a dedicated lane. If you are travelling on an international service, read the coach row on the page rather than the car row: these are two different corridors moving at different speeds.

One more detail for planning connections: our figure is the time up to the barrier, without the checks themselves. For a coach add at least another half an hour for the passport check of the whole vehicle, and more at busy crossings.

The ferry: Orlivka – Isaccea

Orlivka – Isaccea is a ferry across the Danube, not an ordinary land crossing. Capacity here is set by the timetable and the size of the vessel, not by the number of lanes. The queue moves in batches: while the ferry is sailing it does not shrink at all, then it drops all at once.

When planning this route, allow more margin than the current figure suggests, and check the sailing timetable with the operator.

Why these rows show a dash more often

The sources cover traffic types unevenly. Official statistics and cameras count cars more reliably: there are more of them, they sit in the field of view, and the records are kept for them. Pedestrian and coach flows at smaller crossings are recorded less often, and in places not at all.

So a crossing page can look like this: the lane exists, the row is there, and a dash stands where the time would be. That is not an error and does not mean the corridor is closed. It means we have no fresh figure for that traffic type right now, and we will not substitute the car figure for it. If the row is missing altogether, then so is the lane.

What to check before you set off

1. Whether your mode of travel exists at that crossing. A crossing page lists only the types that actually operate there. No row means no lane.
2. Your direction: outbound and inbound queues differ.
3. The coach timetable, not just the queue. A missed departure costs more than an hour of waiting.
4. The typical week for the crossing: pedestrian corridors suffer most at weekends and at coach arrival times.
5. Neighbouring crossings — with the caveat that a neighbour may have no pedestrian lane at all.

How these figures are produced is described in How we calculate waiting times. The logic of choosing between crossings is in How to choose a border crossing.

Page updated 2026-08-14