Swiss expat living abroad. I'm in Switzerland just enough every year to feel the pain of the full fare tickets, and yet not enough to justify the cost of the half-fare card. I live in Asia, but I'm often flying in and out of Switzerland from short hops around Europe, and it's rather shocking and sad to pay far more for the train home from the Airport than my flight cost, almost every single time.

Also then I do fly in long haul, I usually have the choice of a $100 train ride from Zürich or a far cheaper connecting flight to GVA followed by a $30 train. I would much rather take the train from ZRH but it's almost always cheaper to fly.

Switzerland's public transit system is absolutely amazing and I use it anytime I'm in Switzerland — but we have to admit it's one of the most expensive in the world.

German here, who traveled a lot through Switzerland.

I find it even more amazing that there are more people who have a Generalabonnement than a Bahncard 100 (the German equivalent which is a bit cheaper). [1]

Commuting between Fribourg and Zurich was always great, even when there were only circa five minutes to change trains in Bern. It's so efficient, I always catched my train in Bern.

[1] >2019: 500'000 Exemplare des GA sind seit dieser Woche im Umlauf. Dies entspricht im Vergleich zu vor 20 Jahren einer Verzwanzigfachung.

>Anzahl der Besitzer einer BahnCard 100 bis 2021. Die BahnCard 100 der Deutschen Bahn wurde lange Zeit immer beliebter, im Jahr 2021 gab es rund 36.000 Besitzer.

> I find it even more amazing that there are more people who have a Generalabonnement than a Bahncard 100 (the German equivalent which is a bit cheaper). [1]

To contextualize this a bit: Switzerland has about a tenth of the German population (~8.5M vs ~83M)

> I find it even more amazing that there are more people who have a Generalabonnement than a Bahncard 100 (the German equivalent which is a bit cheaper).

GA costs about 50% of a typical monthly Swiss salary.

BC100 costs about 100% of a typical monthly German salary.

Germany has a 8.7 times larger area, and a 7.4 times longer rail network though.

Yes, but in Germany you probably don't travel 8 times as much.

> a year of unrestricted travel throughout the (almost) whole country on any train

Any train, or boat, or tram, or bus,... :)

Source: expat in Zürich and loving it!

However you look at, it's brutality expensive. It's nearly always cheaper to drive.

That depends on a lot of factors. If you live in or around Zürich for example, the median price just to rent a parking space is CHF 200/month, or CHF 2400/yr.

For comparison, an adult GA is CHF 3860/yr, so paying for a parking space in Zürich alone puts you 2/3rd of the way to the cost of public transportation, even disregarding costs like insurance, the car itself, registration, vignette, fuel, vehicle maintenance, tyres and parking costs away from home.

Where did you get the price figure for a parking space in Zürich?

It's CHF 300 per year in a blue zone where you have to find a spot whenever you feel like parking your car.

That number was from Immoscout24 listings of parking spaces for rent [0].

If you have vacant spaces in blue zones near you, that's a viable option. There are plenty of places where that's not the case though.

[0]: https://www.immoscout24.ch/de/parkplatz/mieten/ort-zuerich

I pay 250 / month for a parking space in an underground garage. That's close to the upper limit from what I've seen. Usually, the prices start around 100-150 for a dedicated parking spot outside.

Maintaing a car (bottom line) in Switzerland hits you with a minimum of 800 Franks a month, or almost 10'000 Franks a year.

A first class Generalabonnement is virtually half the price of that.

So, no. It's certainly not cheaper to drive.

Would you mind sharing your numbers? I recently tried to figure out how much my car costs me but it was less than half of your 10'000, so I'm wondering - either I missed something, or you have a rather expensive car.

If you take the deductable tax rate per kilometer, which is 70 Rappen[0], and assume 15000 kilometers a year you get 10'500 Francs per year

If you Google the question you find a variety of answers, but I think looking at it from the tax man's perspective is a good start.

I agree that the cost nay vary, but it can also be significantly higher than 1K per month, depending on the model of car, yearly kilometers and your risk from an insurance perspective.

[0] That's the rate you can deduct from your taxable income per kilometer if you use a private car for work purposes.

Thanks, that clarifies things. The number makes sense as a rough average (which would make sense for the taxes), calling it a 'minimum' was what confused me a little.

I wouldn't be so sure. Maybe if you look just at the price of the car itself, but between parking, gas, insurance, maintenance, the actual cost can get fairly high.

I don't know about prices now, but when I lived there, if you actually needed to travel so much that the GA was worth it over the half-fare card, it definitely was worth it over the car, just on gas prices alone.

I'm from the Netherlands, living in Switzerland, and public transport prices in both countries are roughly the same. But other prices + salaries in CH are almost double the ones in NL. Also, punctuality, cleanliness and sitting space in Swiss trains is much better.

So at least comparing to NL, public transport in CH is brutally cheap.

Only if you own the car in the first place and wouldn't part with it by any mean.

Owning a car is brutally expensive.

And it might be quite a bit faster too. For example, to get to the airport from where I lived would take 3 hours by train and 2 by car.

Is there any alternative to this? Because that's about 4 times the price of the normal monthly local bus pass in the US and the UK. Most people don't need to travel around the country, they just need to commute to their jobs.

Yes you can only have the smaller passes. But taking the GA is really convenient. You just enter every public transport without thinking about buying a ticket. I had a general abo for years and decided against renewing it when I moved to a job 3min of biking distance from home, I missed it dearly despite owning a car.

You are drunk after a late night. Some sort of public transport will bring you home. You want to do some hiking today? You just go to the nearest train station and decide at the last minute. You want to go to that music festival/concert on the other side of the country? Take the train, have a nap, chitchat or share a meal with your friend for a few hours without the stress of traffic, looking or paying for parking a car at your destination. Train is great, it allows you to move from A to B while basically being at the pub.

You might not need to access your whole country but once you realize you can you use that opportunity and realize your country is much deeper and more interesting than you thought it was.

That's all correct. In addition, you can get almost the same convencience without purchasing an expensive GA by using the EasyRide feature [1]. No more worrying about buying and choosing the right ticket.

[1] https://www.sbb.ch/en/timetable/mobile-apps/sbb-mobile/easyr...

Amazing! Everywhere needs this

Apparently half a million Swiss did the math and decided 4 times that local bus pass price is worth their money. It's not like you have to get a GA. I don't and I'm happy with the half-fare abo, my daughter has a local pass and a half-fare abo (which doesn't help to the local pass reductions), but if you go in the mountains or skiing enough weekends (and many do) you will save lots with the GA - as the mountains are often not in your local bus network.

Yes, there are.

Mostly, but not necessarily, within regional transportation networks.

As a for example: I pay roughly $1200 for one year of travel within the city of Zurich and the adjacent zone including the airport.

This includes any mode of transportation, except taxis.

A Generalabonnement makes more sense, though, commuting from, say, Zurich to Basel, which is not uncommon.

Edited to add: Regional commuter passes also allow for use of intercity trains, provided that they stop within your zone of validity.

If you just want Zürich city it is less, about $850/year

That sounds about right.

ah cool that sounds very reasonable then

1/2 fare card is about 170$ a year and gives you 50% off every train ticket.

There are yearly abos for specific routes (home to office, typically) that you can choose for 1/2/3/4/5 days a week. But the price usually gets close enough to a full GA that most people in this situation opt for a GA. And many employers cover the 1/2 fare card or GA for their employees.

SBB also (used to?) has a plan where you get a yearly GA and a Tesla or eGolf in every major train station you arrive. It feels magical: get on any train any time and when you arrive there is a car waiting for you. Use it, get back on the train, and there is another car at your destination for you to drive. It isn’t cheap but it’s a pretty neat concept.