How have you experienced Swiss public transport during Covid-19?
What are your experiences with Swiss transport etiquette? And how has the coronavirus pandemic changed this?
From the article How to behave on a Swiss train
Funnily enough I enjoyed more public transport time during COVID than before.
I cancelled my 1st Class GA (having spent years fighting for a seat on my daily Bern-Zürich commute and actually travelled more often into the mountains and elsewhere on a second class Halbtax ticket in virtually empty trains.
I commute by train to work each day. I keep my mask on because I am old and disciplined, but I envy and admire all these young kids not giving a dime talking and drinking all the way inside the train. I am not afraid of Covid-19, I am afraid of government restrictions to the freedom of people!
Public transport is a thing of the past. With 2 lost jobs and a part time job done from home we have not used public transport in the last 14 months. We just walk to Coop and that's all. We don't even have the half-fare cards anymore let alone the yearly SBB passes.
Good point Andrea. We also travelled very little compared to the past when we used to go hiking almost every weekend and we did a lot of winter sports. I don't think it will change over the next years. We are too afraid of catching a virus from the bus driver or the SBB ticket checkers as they talk with everyone and probably already have the virus.
None of the drivers wears a mask, so obviously the virus does not affects bus drivers. Otherwise I cancelled our family's passes both for half-fare and the year SBB subscription. We just walk to nearby places and do not travel anywhere. Even for work. I was asked by someone 1h away to come work there. I gave them the 10h google maps walking distance and asked if they will give us a driver as we will no longer pay for SBB. Let the state pay for them.
the bus driver part is really weird. they are a giant risk to the population. all bus drivers must be forced to wear masks all the time. PLEASE stop these sources of infection
I saw the same in Zurich, Basel and Lucerne. None of the bus and tram drivers wears masks, so by now after getting in contact with all those people they are surely all infected. When I see one getting close to me I just ask them to stay away.
I also try not to use it, people wearing cloth masks not medical ones very often and none pays attention to it, but it is the same as person without mask because this fabric ones are not medical ones they don't work hens half the train you are on are actually "without mask" and no one cares they don't get fined so i won't use the train again because no one cares about really imposing wearing a mask, they should be fined just as people without mask
Both my wife and I use a car and most of the time work from home. The public transport is too expensive. It is a lot cheaper to have an inexpensive car. We bought a family car from an old lady for 500 CHF and we're very happy with it.
We're no longer travelling by public transportation. Just bought two old cars from family members and we're driving everywhere.
Not travelling anymore with public transport. I bough an old car for 2300 CHF, same as the yearly abbo. It pollutes, but it is safer than travelling with sick people in a bus where the driver never wears a mask.
Swiss trains are uncompetitive also because of waiting for connections and very slow city transport to and from the station. When somebody tells that a train from e.g. Zuerich to Basel takes 1 h only, the usual answer is: do you live on the railway station? Relaxed ladies on a bicycle regularly keep up with city trams in Basel over several stops. Sleepy buses creeping through historic city centers add to hours spend unproductively when one takes city transport. Why the metro or fast city buses don't exist in Switzerland, even if cities are quite sizable and many important destinations are on the outskirts?
Great point about whether people live at the railway station! How do you normally get around, and would you say that cycling is easy and safe in Basel?
I traveled in China where all major cities are linked with high-speed rail with speeds of 200–350 km/h. Imagine train from Zurich to Geneva in 45 minutes, Zurich to Munich in 1h, Zurich to Paris in 2 h, Zurich to Milano in 1h - train travel with the speed of air travel. Europe does not even realize that it fallen into a second class. We need to build such a system at least to reduce carbon emissions from flying.
I agree, especially with forcefully pushing people using this slow trains by raising plain tickets. I am all for ecology but I would appreciate if people considered lif time spent on getting to one place.
Pandemic aside, people do seem to spend a lot of time commuting. Last week someone in Graubünden told me that many would rather have a long commute than leave their hometowns or home cantons. Is that the case in your region, too?
Every 500 years the power moves from the east to the west and the other way around. Now it is time for the east to dominate the world again while the west will get all the jobs back, but they will be crappy jobs with crappy currencies.
There must be far more commuting than is really necessary giving rise to numerous well documented negative consequences to the environment and people’s well-being.
I once talked to a lady in a chain department store in the U.K. where she often had a long and often difficult commute, on many days arriving late and, on occasion, not at all. Possibly somebody else was experiencing similar difficulties by commuting to work in an equivalent post in her home town so both are in jobs which could have been filled by locals. This strange situation is multiplied by millions across the western world.
Very strange. It'll be interesting to see how -- or if -- this changes post-pandemic.
@SUSAN MISICKA - that must be older people with homes and money. Younger people like my sister's millennial generation do not own homes and will never afford them. They do not care about relocating other than when they can cancel the rent agreement. She and her husband changed homes about 5-6 times in the last 10 years. The moment something furnished closer to work and cheaper pops up they move. Also they do not like to commute so they prefer to rent something where they can walk to work.
I'm a driver and tend to avoid public transport as much as I can, even before the pandemic. I only use it if I plan to drink alcohol on a night out. Why? Public transport is too busy at peak times and there is too much risk of catching e.g. CovId, the Flu, a cough, a cold, etc from other passengers. I have fewer sick days that my public transport-taking friends and work colleagues. Maybe one day off a year, if that. But, peak times are a problem for all transport, due to an outdated work system. Many people have to work core hours, which means it's busy 7am to 9am, 4pm to 6pm. But, if people were allowed to work from home, or work whenever they wanted in a 24-hour period, there would not be a problem.
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