Water Taxi from Venice Santa Lucia Station

The water taxi from Venice Santa Lucia station leaves from a few metres off the platforms: the jetty is on the bank of the Grand Canal, directly outside the exit. Under the fare schedule of the Comune di Venezia (the city council), the fixed route Ferrovia → Rialto costs €50 per boat and Ferrovia → San Marco €60 per boat. Operators selling the same trip as a commercial transfer usually ask €60–80, and online you will find per-person deals from around €39. Three different numbers for one journey: below is when to use each of them.

Your options for reaching the hotel from the station

Platform prices are the ones recorded at the time of checking and can change; the city fare, by contrast, has not moved in over a decade.

The real difference is not the price, it is the number of bridges. With two suitcases each, a crowded vaporetto and a hotel three bridges from the stop, the €60 water taxi justifies itself. With a backpack and a hotel in Cannaregio, you will never spend it.

The official fare, and what it means from Ferrovia

The service is regulated by the Comune di Venezia (Mobility and Transport Department) and fares are set by the city executive under resolutions D.G.C. 227/2011 and 516/2011. Two systems run side by side:

• On the meter: €15 fixed charge at departure, plus €2 per minute on city routes. If the boat collects you away from a taxi rank, a €5 call-out supplement is added.
• Fixed routes: a single price for the pairs of points listed in the schedule. From P.le Roma – Ferrovia these are: Rialto €50, San Marco €60, Lido €70.

The schedule treats Piazzale Roma and the Ferrovia as a single departure point, so the fare is the same whether you board outside the station or on the other side of the Grand Canal. If you are coming from Tronchetto instead, the Tronchetto → P.le Roma – Ferrovia route costs €40.

In the other direction, heading back to your train, the fares are San Marco → Ferrovia €60, Rialto → Ferrovia €50, Casinò (San Marcuola) → Ferrovia €40 and Murano → Ferrovia €60.

Three things change the final bill:

• Night: +€10 between 22:00 and 06:00 under the city schedule.
• Passengers beyond the fourth: +€5 per person on the meter, +€10 on fixed routes (the supplement covers one bag).
• Luggage: +€3 for each item beyond the first four and beyond the number of passengers.

Venice residents and passengers with disabilities are entitled to a 20% discount on every item: the San Marco route drops to €48 and the night supplement to €8.

Where you actually board

The city recognises two taxi ranks at the Ferrovia: one in front of the Scalzi church, the other next to the ACTV jetty. These are official standing points, with the fare sheet displayed as the law requires: before you board, photograph it along with the boat’s licence number. It is the only evidence that counts if you later want to dispute the price.

If you booked online, the exact meeting point is on your voucher — the transfer sold on Tiqets, for instance, sets the appointment at the Alilaguna desk outside the station. Do not follow anyone who approaches you on the forecourt offering “a taxi right now”: go to the jetty or to the desk named on your booking.

If your hotel has a private jetty you can be collected there, but a taxi starting anywhere other than a city rank adds the €5 call-out supplement. The city’s water radio-taxi line is 199 48 49 50.

How to spend less without giving up the boat

The official fare is per boat, and that is where all the margin sits:

• San Marco at €60 split between four passengers is €15 each, less than two Alilaguna tickets.
• Rialto at €50 between four is €12.50 each, barely more than a vaporetto.
• Six people pay €60 plus €10 for each of the two passengers beyond the fourth: €80 in total, about €13 each.

The per-person transfer from €39 makes sense when there are only one or two of you, because you are not paying for a whole boat.

Other practical ways to spend less:

• Move your departure before 22:00 if you can: the night supplement is €10 and the service is identical. If the timing is not negotiable, read Night taxi.
• Count your bags: from the fifth item onwards the city schedule charges €3 apiece, and some operators apply their own conditions — Consorzio Motoscafi, for example, asks €5 per suitcase from the fifth. Details and edge cases in Luggage.
• Ask for the pricing basis before you board: “is this per boat or per person?” and “which route are you applying?”. Agreeing the fare before departure is exactly what the city advises for land taxis.
• Bring cash. Online you pay by card or PayPal; on board, card acceptance is not universal.

Meter or fixed route: which works out better

Do the maths in two lines before you choose. A Ferrovia → San Marco run on the meter, if it takes 15 minutes, costs €15 fixed charge plus €30 of minutes: €45, with €5 on top if you are collected away from a taxi rank. The fixed route to the same destination is €60. On paper the meter looks cheaper, but it depends entirely on canal traffic and the speed limits in the inner rii (the narrow interior canals): if the trip stretches to 25 minutes, the meter reaches €65 and the fixed route wins.

Rule of thumb: for destinations covered by the fixed-route schedule (Rialto, San Marco, Lido), ask for the fixed route, because you know the price before you set off. For addresses off the list, deep in the rii, the meter is what you get — and it is worth budgeting for a few extra minutes.

Watch how the destination is named, too. The schedule lists precise points: “Rialto” means the Carbon and Cerva ranks; “San Marco” covers Molo, Ponte della Paglia, the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele and Ca’ di Dio. If your pick-up or drop-off is not a taxi rank — your hotel’s water door on an inner canal, say — the €5 call-out supplement applies. Ask which route and which supplements they are charging before you board, not with the engine running. The full comparison between the city fare and commercial price lists, route by route, is in Prices.

Luggage, tides and your hotel’s water door

Plenty of Venetian hotels have a water entrance, but not all of them can be used at all times. At acqua alta (high water) the boat may not clear the bridges over the inner canals; at low tide the canal can be too shallow or the hotel’s step too far above the deck. In both cases the practice is the same: you get out at the nearest usable jetty, generally within five minutes’ walk, and the driver hands the bags ashore.

Two questions to put to your hotel in writing before booking: do you have a water entrance? and can it be used at any tide? If the answer to the second is no, plan on at least one bridge on foot with the suitcases.

Hotels facing straight onto the Grand Canal are the most likely to have a usable private landing; for everywhere else the drop-off point is decided on the day, according to the tide.

Book ahead or negotiate at the jetty

Booking online locks in the price and gives you a voucher, which helps most if you arrive late or travel as a large group. At the jetty you pay the city fare, which on short trips can come in below the commercial transfer: it is the classic trade-off between certainty and price, set out in full in How to book.

The numbers that actually matter: Consorzio Motoscafi Venezia, 041 522 2303, a 24-hour call centre with a fleet of more than a hundred GPS-coordinated boats. Venezia Taxi, 041 723112, which has its own rank at Santa Lucia station as well as at Tronchetto, Piazzale Roma, Rialto and San Marco. Venice Water Taxi, 041 5229040, a consortium of thirty motorboats operating around the clock.

Where to go from here

• If your flight leaves from or lands at Marco Polo, the page Airport → Venice explains the darsena (the airport’s boat dock) and the airport routes.
• To work out whether you need a boat to yourself or a seat on a shared transfer, compare Private taxi and Shared taxi.
• If you left the car in the lagoon or arrive by coach, the other gateway is Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto.

In short

The water taxi from Venice Santa Lucia station is the only way to get from the train platform onto the water in under five minutes, and it costs €50 to Rialto or €60 to San Marco under the city fare schedule, against the €60–80 operators normally charge. For two people it is not the cheapest choice; for four with luggage, it becomes one. If you would rather know the bill before you set foot on the jetty, book the transfer and show the voucher.