First-ever drop in Swiss rail passengers "The number of passengers travelling with the Swiss Federal Railways declined for the first time last year, primarily due to a downturn in tourism and leisure travel. Trains carried 967,000 passengers a day in 2012, compared with 977,000 in 2011." Still for a country of only 8M people, carrying a million people a day on it's railway is an interesting statistic. On the other hand everyone I know here travels to work by public transport, most often the train...
Posted by
Knoxville, TN, USA
7209 posts
I wish we could spend more time in Switzerland, but it's just SO expensive we have to limit our time there. Swiss Public Transport is truly amazing, and I pity the Swiss Tourist who come to the USA and find our pathetic excuses for public transport.
Posted by
Seattle, WA
17448 posts
Somehow I read the title as " First ever Drop-In Swiss Rail Passengers" and was picturing two Gleitschirm pilots (paragliders) dropping out of the sky and landing onto a rail car.
Posted by
OP
Bern, Switzerland
1047 posts
"Swiss Public Transport is truly amazing, and I pity the Swiss Tourist who come to the USA and find our pathetic excuses for public transport." Well believe it or not my wife (Swiss) and I (Swiss/Irish) spent 6 months travelling in the USA on Amtrak! Now it is almost 20 years ago when there were more routes, but we enjoyed it very much. We really loved some of the stations in particular the ones in Washington DC and Los Angeles.
Posted by
Knoxville, TN, USA
7209 posts
Amtrak is slow and expensive only goes to a handful of destinations. If you only stuck to the Amtrak for transportation then you missed a great deal of the USA.
Posted by
OP
Bern, Switzerland
1047 posts
Well we are actually talking about 20 years ago when there were more routes and the ticket cost $265 per month all in! And between that and car rentals here and there we managed to hit every state but South Dakota.
Posted by
Green Bay
21166 posts
Who just posted a magazine article about a revolt against good old SBB. They quit selling tickets on the train but you still get fined for "Invalid Ticket". Horror stories included people who could not validate ticket because the stamping machine was broken or out of ink, ticket vending machines at unmanned stations out of order. My favorite, 50 chf fine because the mobil app purchase did not clear the bank until 10 seconds after the train left the station.
SBB has apparently collected a record of 6,000,000 chf in fines in the last year. There is a moral here somewhere.