The integrated timetable of Switzerland

Swiss here. Amazing system, using it everyday. Brutally expensive tickets tho.

I would say, if you take single tickets (even with the half-fare card), the tickets are quite more expensive than the trip with a normal car (counting costs of car, of gas, insurrance, ...).

However, if you have a monthly fare because you go somewhere regularly, it is still expensive, but much more managable.

The monthly General Abo (unlimited travel for all public transports in Switzerland) is ~340$/month. A parking spot in a city could already be from 80$ to 200$ a month.

I'd like to add that the fact that single tickets are [sometimes too] expensive in some cases is due to the approach of billing by geographic zones, which has its own up- and downsides.

For example: If I want to go from somewhere around Lake Zurich to Zurich, I have to pay to "travel in every geographical zone" between me and Zurich. However, this also allows me to travel freely in these zones.

In addition to that, if you pay for a return trip (which most people usually do), you automatically pay for travelling freely in these zones in any direction for a full 24 hours.

So assuming a half-fare card, I pay CHF 3.20 to take the bus 500m and back, which is ridiculously expensive for that distance, however, I "only" pay CHF 12.90 for riding all forms of PT (train, bus, ship, etc.) between me and Zurich, including the whole city for a full day, which is relatively reasonable for Zurich standards.

Swiss here, it always depends. Some rides are cheaper by car but take less time by train and you have WiFi and fresh coffee in trains so it's only partially travel time partially leisure or work time.

Some routes are more expensive, but again way more comfortable than a car.

The there are dozens of hacks to save. Early booking, last minute bookings, half fair (which is only $200 or so a year and makes you pay half for everything including boats and some mountain trains), $50 24h all inclusive tickets, ...

IMO if you assume our median income to be 3 times that of Austria (or Germany, Italy for that matter). And our tickets on average cost only 1.5-2x as much while we actually have one of the best networks you can think of I would say it's not expensive at all.

My all in leasing car is $500 + petrol. For 2 people getting 2 all inklusive Tickets would still be cheaper.

What isn’t explained in the article is how this was made possible. While carefully adjusting departure times is certainly part of it, there were also a range of construction projects that shaved minutes off the travel times between major hubs to bring them just below multiples of 30 minutes (and 15 minutes in some cases). This makes it much easier to coordinate arrivals and departures and minimize transfer times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_2000