I think that it's a bit much to pay 10 CHF every time you want to take your bike on the train (or a half-price ticket, whichever is cheaper), but I've found a solution to this that works pretty well: If you put your bike in a bag, then it goes for free. The style of bag that SBB recommends that you use only requires you to remove the front wheel. They can be obtained for about 90 CHF from stores such as Veloplus: www.veloplus.ch, search their site for "transit"; another brand available from other retailers is called a "tranZbag".

The bag is very basic and so weighs less than a kilo: my wife's and mine both fit in one 10 litre pannier with room to spare for a couple of rain jackets and lunch. It only takes a couple of minutes at each end to put the bike into and take it out of the bag. Plus, if you're running late then you can take the bike onto the train as it is and put it into the bag as the train is pulling away.

We were originally a bit confused as to where you put the bike in the train when its in a bag. After all, you haven't paid the surcharge, so you shouldn't use the regular bike rack, correct? No, in fact, that's wrong. We surveyed several ticket attendants on several types of trains and they all wanted us to put the bag in the regular bike area. We have even discovered that you can still hang the bike on the hook while in the bag, just hang it from the back wheel and make sure that there is some slack in the bag where the hook is. Of course, if other cyclists enter the train who do have a ticket for their bike, then yield the official slots to them, but there's then still normally room to put the bike bag next to or between their hanging bikes.

Of course, if you have more money than us then you can pay 195 CHF per year to take your bike anywhere you wanna go in Switzerland without having to worry about a bag, but you'd have to use this more than just on the occasional weekend ride to make it cheaper than individual tickets. The bike bag still has advantages over this option though because it also avoids extra charges on trains in many other surrounding countries, and the 90 CHF initial outlay only has to be paid once instead of paying the 195 CHF every year.