How to Get Around Switzerland

Trains are the answer to almost every question here. The network is the densest in Europe, punctual and integrated, with connections timed to meet across the whole country, and it reaches places no road does.

Passes. The Swiss Travel Pass covers trains, buses, boats and most city transport, plus museum entry and discounts on mountain railways. The Half Fare Card halves every ticket for a month and usually works out cheaper for longer or slower trips. Work out which suits your itinerary before buying — the difference can be several hundred francs.

Mountain transport. Cog railways, funiculars, cable cars and gondolas are treated as public transport and appear in the timetable. They are also the single biggest cost of a Swiss trip, and the high-altitude ones are where the budget goes.

Postbuses in yellow reach the villages the trains do not, with a three-note horn used on blind mountain corners.

Driving. Roads are excellent, but a motorway vignette is compulsory, valid for a year, and driving without one brings heavy fines on the spot; buy it at a border crossing, petrol station, post office or tourist office, by phone or online. If you have an accident, use the orange emergency phones. Alpine winters need winter tyres and snow chains, and roads outside the towns are narrow and winding with conditions that deteriorate fast even in summer. Several resorts — Zermatt, Wengen, Mürren, Saas-Fee — are car-free and reached by train.

The thing to know before you drive

If you are involved in a car accident, use the orange emergency phones to ask for help. They sit along the motorway network and are the expected way to raise an incident here — worth knowing before you need one, because a foreign mobile and a guess at the right number is the slower path.

The vignette

You must buy and display a vignette sticker to travel on Swiss motorways. It is valid for one year and can be bought at most border crossings, at petrol stations, at post offices, at tourist offices, by phone on +800 1002 0030, or online from the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security. Drivers without one face heavy fines levied on the spot, so check a hire car actually has one — they usually do, but the fine lands on the driver either way.

Alpine roads

Roads outside the towns are narrow and winding, and conditions deteriorate fast even in summer, especially in heavy rain and in snow at altitude: reduce speed well below what the road looks like it allows. Alpine winters need both winter tyres and snow chains, not one or the other. Check road conditions before setting off, and carry water, food, warm clothing and any medicines in the vehicle — a closed pass can hold you for hours.

Trains, and why they are the default

The network is the densest in Europe at 5,250 kilometres, carried 614 million passengers in 2023, and is virtually 100 per cent electrified. Swiss residents each travelled an average of 2,446 kilometres by rail in 2023, more than in any other European country — which is the real reason the timetable is built to connect rather than merely to run. Sixty per cent of the network is operated by SBB; BLS runs much of the rest, and the Rhaetian Railway and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn work the narrow gauge in the mountains.

Insurance, if you are going up

For skiing, potholing and mountaineering — and for anything classed as particularly dangerous, which explicitly includes off-piste skiing, mountain biking, climbing, paragliding and BASE jumping — your policy needs to cover emergency rescue and repatriation, or transfer to a neighbouring country for treatment. Check the company you book with is well established, and check the policy names your activity rather than assuming it.