The current station was built in 1969 to the west of the city centre, but has not proved to be a success due to its poor location The first station in Ludwigshafen was a terminus in Rheinschanze, now central Ludwigshafen, opened on 11 June 1847 on the Palatine Ludwig Railway to the coal pits of Bexbach, now Saarland.

The original station building was rebuilt with three-story wings on both sides in order to cope with the opening of the line to Worms on 15 June 1853 and the bridge over the Rhine to Mannheim on 25 February 1867.

One of these was prevented from going forward by World War II and another was rejected by the Federal Government in the early 1950s because it failed to maintain connections with the BASF factory.

[7] In the late 1950s it was decided to build a new station at its current location as part of a comprehensive transport plan for Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.

In the middle a four-track tunnel of the tram station was built under a pedestrian area; this is also used by the trains of the Rhine-Haardt Railway (Rhein-Haardtbahn).

[10] An essential prerequisite for the transformation of the Ludwigshafen railway facilities was the removal of the freight and marshalling yards, which were moved to Mannheim.

[11] It was said that the removal of the terminal station would provide Ludwigshafen with urban development opportunities that the devastation of the war had not.

[11] The new timetables after the relocation of the station was not much changed: long-distance and Trans Europ Express continued to run to Mannheim without stopping in Ludwigshafen.

In 1979 the Rathaus-Center opened on the site of the former terminus; this is a high-rise building consisting of a shopping centre and the city hall.

In 2002, the Ludwigshafen-based urban planner Lars Piske described the station as sinking into uselessness and suggested that it had led to the loss of sales from Ludwigshafen to Mannheim.