What is the purpose of the half price card, other than to allow a schedule of inflated "full price" tickets to rip off tourists and fools?

Seems like everyone who catches a train a few times a year already has one. I recoup my annual half tax fee in a month of travelling two zones to work.

That's it, that's all. You pegged it.

Don't lose it - it's 30CHF for a replacement (as I just found out to my cost)

Gav

I'm glad someone else said it, I'm sick of everybody bullying me about not having a half-tax card when I complain that it costs me 11.80 for a 5 minute bus ride and back home.

Lots of companies pay for it, I have my previous company to thank for my 2 year one

And yes, it does appear that that only tourists and er.. mark.. pay full whack...

I did not have one for eight years and did not suffer. Kurzstrecke here and there does not work out better over the year.

Now I have one for the winter chills

Ok so I'm man of principle - I try to stand up for the downtrodden... I know plenty of people without half tax thanks very much.

Oddly, so do I, even when the company we both work for pays for it.

I got a 3 year one - it payed for itself easily in the first year ;o)

ok i dunno what u are comlainin about the half fair card is pretty good...

"When in Rome...."

Have had one since 1993. It pays off only when you use it, obviously.

So, get out there and use it! I do, it has paid for itself everytime I renew!

Bests
Scott

Maybe I should re-direct recent posters back to my original thread-starter. It wasnt a complaint, just a query.

Basically, nearly everyone who uses public transport has a half price/halb tax card, therefore the "half price" fare must be nearer to the real full price (excluding rail subsidy considerations). And that makes the "full price" ticket more a theoretical or penalty fare. For the sake of collecting a few "full price" fares from Tourists, fools and Mark(!), a whole layer of card administration has been introduced.

I love the card. It makes rail travel cheap in my opinion. It is much cheaper than travel in the Netherlands, where a similar card exists, but it is only 40% and cannot be used during peak travel. In other words, it is a lousy card.

Dutch prices are similar to Swiss prices if you ignore the cards. So I think the normal price is realistic, and the half fare is a good deal.

What isn't a good deal here are the abonnements, especially the GA. A 'mere' 3000 francs and still you need to pay as much as a Halbtax person for mountain trains, ski passes, and you get the same discount on other things like boats.

hey fellow-forumers

I thought it time (as a newbie to the forum) to add to the fray !!

As an avid train user (don't really love sitting in a traffic jam on a weekend just to get home from the mountains) I must say I don't understand why you all don't have a half tax. Yes without one its expensive, but its all relative. What is the cost of owning a car (petrol, parking, insurance, repairs, depreciation, 2 yearly inspection etc) - not owning one, that was a rhetorical question, but maybe you can answer it ? 2000, 3000 chf?. To put it in perspective - I spend about 1500chf on travel, and i go hiking most weekends, skiing in winter, and all over the place the rest of the time. My half tax costs about 200chf(approx) for 2 years.

Don't get me wrong, I can see benefits in having a car - and may well try owning one one of these years for the hell of it, but in switzerland it "rarely" makes sense. I am not inherently a car hater - as I come from Oz where we all have 2 cars each and drive to the shops 3 min walk away.

Another maybe more important thing to think about - does the SBB make any money. As we all assume they are raking in the cash. A quote from their end of year finances "schloss der SBB Konzern das Geschäftsjahr 2005 mit einem Verlust von CHF 166,3 Mio. ab. ". If you don't "do" german here is the translation " we lost 166 Mill last year".

So are they ripping you off for fun ? the answer I think is no. Switzerland in my opinion has the best public transport in the world (maybe japan is better but not many others) and it costs to keep it that way. I recommend using it while you can. "For when I one day go home - its back to sitting in the car, 1 hour each way to work and back !"

cheers

ashley

Hit the nail on the head there Yokine... Most posters on this thread seem to have ignored this aspect, and I totally agree with you. It reminds me a little of the madness of the TV licence system. I'm sure it would be hard to convince a tourist of the logic of the half-tax system and they would be perfectly justified to feel it was more like a penalty fare.

i totally agree with u, there are so many other types of cards aswell that are used here glies 7 and so on...in australia we have no such thing. here the transport system is friggin excellent compared to our wonderfull sydney wanna be transport system.

nicely summed up!! well done!!

Nobody is questioning the excellence of the Swiss public transport system. I think it's so good that I dont even think about owning a car here.

The thread is about the "half-price" card system. Imagine if Migros introduced a card to buy things from the supermarket at their current prices, and if you didnt have a card you had to pay double. E.g. Milk chf1.60 with the card, if you dont have the card your milk is chf3.20. Everyone knows that the milk is really only worth chf1.60. In reality this is how the SBB Half Tax card works.

Please note that this example does not bring into question the quality of Migros milk

For me, this is probably the nail-head-hitting thing. Swissies love that extra layer of administration. They also like to keep the jobless figures artifically low by ignoring potential efficiency gains.

Erm. I'm not sure I agree with the comparison of buying Milk at migros that you get at the "normal" cost if you have a special card.

Aren't there tonns of these cards around? What about the cinecard? I dont have one! So I'm an idiot for paying more money when I could really only pay 13 bucks for my movie entrance? As I rarely go to the movies, I dont need a card. Same can be said for train travel ....

(and actually, if you do have a cumulus card you do get your milk a little cheaper 'cause you get money back!)

The jobless figures are that low because people disappear from them once they're unemployed for long enough and used up their unemployment insurance money and move on to social benefits.