SBB GA
I do not own, and have never owned, a car. This means that I go everywhere using public transportation. In Switzerland we are spoiled with, among many other things, a fabulous train network, operated by the Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB). It makes sense to get their Half Fare Travelcard if you do as little as 3 long-ish round trips per year. For example, Zurich to Geneva and back is CHF 156 full price. I have always had one. For the last 5 years, I have also been using their Annual Bike Pass that allows me to bring my bike whenever I want. The idea was to explore more places with my bike, and it worked. The big question since then has been: would their GA Travelcard do the same to me? Would I travel and explore more if everything was “free”?
My hypothesis has always been that a GA Travelcard only makes sense if you commute daily with public transportation. It costs roughly CHF 4’000, divided by 200 work days, makes CHF 20/day. If for example you live in Winterthur and work in Zurich, the (at best) 20min train ride costs CHF 13.40 full price one way. The GA Travelcard would be cheaper, especially if you do additional trips on the weekend. I have never been in that position, with my commutes in the last 20 years ranging from 1 meter (home office) to a couple of kilometers (so, bikeable).
In the last 10 years, I have roughly been spending CHF 2’300/year on transportation. This includes the price of the Half Fare Travelcard, CHF 190/year, or CHF 170/year for loyalty customers. Note that the Half Fare Travelcard also allows you to cap any day trip to CHF 78, meaning no matter how much you travel in 1 day, it will not cost you more than CHF 78. You can see in the following graph that the yearly average expense (grey dotted line) has been relatively stable. The actual yearly expenses have however been alternating, for some unknown reason.
One year ago, my new employer offered to pay for a GA Travelcard. I’m not 100% sure, but I guess the reason is that I’m supposed to go to the office in Lausanne 2 days per week:
2 times/week × (52 weeks/year - 6 weeks holidays) × CHF 110 = CHF 10’120
where CHF 110 is the full-price fare for a round trip from Zurich Oerlikon to Lausanne. But nobody at the office comes in 2 days per week, and I certainly don’t. I have been 14 times over the course of the whole year.
No matter why I got offered a GA Travelcard, I wanted to test my hypothesis and see if I can travel enough during my time off to make it profitable. At every start of a trip I would log it to my phone:
Like for the Half Fare Travelcard, I would cap daily expenses at CHF 78. I guess there are daily caps for regional networks like the ZVV but I did not bother looking it up and taking those into account. Like for every manual data collection, I’m sure that there were errors. In any case, here is 1 year of trying to max out my travel inside Switzerland:
As you can see, or maybe not, I barely could not meet the cost of the GA Travelcard. My total was CHF 3’982.60, versus the CHF 3’995 of the GA Travelcard. To be fair, I counted the half-price fares for every trip, as if that year was one of my regular ones, with a Half Fare Travelcard. If we zoom in:
If we look solely at the amounts, I have traveled about 70% more (= the increase from CHF 2’300 to CHF 4’000). Which is quite something, to be honest. So, how did my habits change?
- Like previously mentioned, I went to the office in Lausanne a bunch of times. A couple of times I stayed at my Mom’s in Montreux. So I saw my Mom a bit more during that year.
- I did things like a random day trip to Lugano, which I would not have done otherwise.
- I have used the public transportation in Zurich more often, instead of biking, especially when it was raining. I would also regularly do evening walks from my place to Zurich HB (roughly 1h), and then take a train back home.
- I joined Ananas CrossFit in Winterthur in January. This means I travel to Winterthur at least twice weekly. Another reason to pick that gym is that their subscription includes access to the Skillspark (or the other way around?). I would never have considered this without having a GA Travelcard.
- Carmen and I did 2 train days. One to Solothurn, Kaiseraugst, Liestal and Aarburg, and one to Appenzell.
- I did a bunch of shorter trips in the Zurich region to try other mountain bike trails.
- I recently was surprised that the boat ride from Friedrichshafen to Romanshorn is included in the GA Travelcard. I would have thought otherwise because half of the trip is in Germany.
So, would I pay for a GA Travelcard myself? I honestly don’t know. If my spending would have been clearly above CHF 4’000, like CHF 500–1’000 over, it would be worth it. One other thing to consider though is the comfort of never worrying to buy a ticket. You can take whichever train/bus/tram/boat whenever you want.