There are two principal railway stations in Bristol: Bristol Parkway and Bristol Temple Meads, and there are scheduled coach links to most major UK cities. The city is connected by road on an east-west axis from London to Wales by the M4 motorway, and on a north-southwest axis from Birmingham to Exeter by the M5 motorway. The M32 motorway is a spur from the M4 to the city centre. The city is also served by its own airport, Bristol Internation (BRS), at Lulsgate, which has seen substantial improvements to its runway, terminal and other facilities.

Since 2000 the city council has included a light rail system in its local transport plan, but has so far been unable to fund the project. The city was offered European Union funding for the system, but the Department for Transport did not provide the required additional funding.

As a consequence public transport within the city is still largely bus based. The majority of the local bus service is operated by First Group. The central part of the city also has water-based routes, operated as the Bristol Ferry Boat, which provide both leisure and commuter services on the harbour.

Bristol was never well served by suburban railways, though the Severn Beach Line to Avonmouth and Severn Beach survived the Beeching Axe and is still in operation today. The Portishead Railway was closed in the Beeching Axe but was relaid between 2000-2002 as far as the Royal Portbury Dock with a Strategic Rail Authority rail-freight grant. Plans to relay a further three miles of track to Portishead, a largely dormitory town with only one connecting road, have been discussed but there is insufficient funding to rebuild stations.

Despite being hilly, Bristol is one of the prominent cycling cities of England, and is home to the national cycle campaigning group Sustrans. It has a number of urban cycle routes, as well as links to National Cycle Network routes to Bath and London, to Gloucester and Wales, and to the south-western peninsula of England. Between 1991 and 2001 Bristol had the third highest increase in bicycle use of any UK council area, at 1.64%.