Switzerland: 32.5% of population uses Half Fare Card
According to an announcement by the Public Transport Union, there are now 2 million half fare cards in use in Switzerland. For those who don’t know, this card enables you to buy half fare tickets for almost all public transport systems (trains, buses, trams, etc.) in Switzerland. It costs ~150 swiss francs per year (slightly less if you buy it for more than 1 year).
I tried to do the math - at the end of 2004, Switzerland had a population of 7.4 million people. If you take into account that ~17% of the population is below the age of 16 (and therefore doesn’t need a half fare card), that means that roughly 32.5% of the population uses a half fare card.
In fact, the percentage should be even higher, since a fair amount of people actually own a “General Abonnement“, which allows them to travel for “free”.
Update: Yes, of course the “General Abonnement” costs a fair amount of money and therefore, the word “free” is not really the correct one.
Posted in: Uncategorized | December 30, 2005 2:06 pm
1 Comment »
Anonymous, on January 2, 2006 @ 2:23 pm
Nice site — I found it while looking for images of the no-smoking in trains ad campaign in Switzerland.
I moved to CH a year ago, and I still find the use of the word “free” to describe the included services in the general abonnement quite odd.
- A 1/2 fare card holder, occasionally a monthly GA holder
RSS-Comment-Feed | TrackBack URI