Zurich does pretty well with light rail, trams and buses. Public transport is very good there. Two more reasons are that the city isn't that big, so you're in easy walking distance of some sort of connection, and the terrain isn't ideal. A good chunk of the population live up steep hills which are well-served by the tram system. The airport is also very well-connected by bus/tram/rail, and only 10-15 minutes to the centre.

That said, I would have loved to see HBf on this website.

i remember visiting zurich once and standing at a light rail station when the next train was one minute overdue and all the people waiting were looking at their watches in total disbelief and consternation. warms my sla-minded heart :)

One of the most mind blowing things for me was seeing that river Sihl flows through Hbf between the tracks.

Can you explain where? Which tracks?

I have seen this comment on Reddit a few months ago, and some people were talking about it. They came to the conclusion that you cannot see the Sihl.

It's between the underground tracks of Bahnhof Löwenstrasse and the above ground: [1]

There are a lot of little neat things. For example the elevators go sideways [2] because the platform in the underground Bahnhof is wider (this is due to safety regulations etc.) [3]

BTW, what is marked as Stadttunnel in [1] is the new bike tunnel [4] which has actually been there for many years as it was supposed to be a highway tunnel but was never opened (built many, many years ago).

[1] https://img.nzz.ch/2014/05/30/1.18312867.1401474596.jpg

[2] https://www.standseilbahnen.ch/images/8000/8000.06-zuerich-h...

[3] https://implenia.com/fileadmin/implenia.com/referenzen/durch...

[4] https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/dam/web/de/mobilitaet/v...

To be precise it flows above (and under) the tracks, as in, perpendicular, not "in between" parallel tracks.

BTW Hbf is a München thing, we call our beloved Zürich Hauptbahnhof just HB :-)

I think Hbf is a Germany thing not just Munich.

Yes it is.

Yes, my mistake - it's been a while! Definitely a local thing, and always with German pronunciation. There were a several words/phrases like that which got loaned into English. Doubly confusing because it wasn't always clear if the new word was Züri, regular Swiss-German, French but not Swiss-German, or High German. Had to be careful using new vocab in Germany!

Not to mention that the locals here when referring to it while speaking English, totally translate it to "eɪʧ biː" sometimes.

Other times, in the middle English sentence, the German pronunciation pops up "ˈhaː ˈbeː"

Fun

> BTW Hbf is a München thing, we call our beloved Zürich Hauptbahnhof just HB :-)

I just reused the term to be consistent and less confusing. No need to be Bünzli about it :P

I really like urban places with public transport on the street. It leads to less cars and more pedestrian friendly streets. Also I think for small distances (Zürich is not that big), I rather ride a bit longer with the tram than going down to a deep metro station, especially in hilly places.

Costs, existing infrastructure and alternatives (S-Bahn was extended) and fears that the local businesses above would loose foot traffic if people are no longer traveling above ground with the trams.

Because talk radio stations of your city are funded by ads for local car dealers and the show hosts constantly dump on public transportation projects. For example, Quebec City.

I don’t think that’s the causal relationship. Even if the stakeholders were purely the listeners: radios are in cars. Basically all the radio listeners aren’t just drivers they are driving.

The public transport coverage especially with tram in Zürich is already amazing

with sufficient density and priority on roads, a tram network might be better, other than having to wait outside in bad weather

From what I read it was in the 70s in a phase of anti globalisation and growth. Of course in those days car traffic was much lower than now. I bet Zürich residents would be really happy to have had one now. Where I live we have both metro and tram and the metro is so much more efficient due to longer trains, more frequent departures, never being held up by traffic etc.