Swiss lead the world in train travel

The Swiss are keen users of their national rail network Keystone Archive

The Swiss passion for train travel is alive and well. Not only do they make more journeys than any other nation in Europe, they also travel greater distances by train than even the locomotive-obsessed Japanese.

The Swiss make a train journey 41 times a year on average, an achievement surpassed only by the Japanese who retain their world number one spot with an average of 70 journeys.

The figures, released by the public transport information service on Thursday, show that the Swiss leave other European travellers way behind when it comes to the number of journeys taken, according to the statistics recorded in 1999.

The people of Denmark and Luxembourg come second, making an average 28 journeys, followed by Austrians (22), and the Dutch and Germans (21).

The figures show that the Swiss travel an average 1,850 kilometres by train every year, while the Japanese manage to top that with 1,905 kilometres.

However, buried in the statistics is the observation that only the Swiss Federal Railways and the BLS Lotschberg railway passengers are included in the survey.

If all the other Swiss railways were included – private, tram and cable – the Swiss would beat the Japanese hands down, recording a distance of 2,754 kilometres per inhabitant per year.

Behind Switzerland and Japan come Belarus (1,656 kilometres per year) France (1,130) and Austria (1,004).

The land of the automobile, the United States, comes at the bottom of the list, with only 0.5 rail journeys per inhabitant per year.

It’s not only passengers who prefer train travel in Switzerland – an increasing amount of freight is being transported by rail. Last year, a record 59.3 million tonnes was carried by rail in the country, an increase of 3.4 per cent over the previous year.

swissinfo with agencies