Hey all,

could you remove my doubt here:

1) SBB ticket from Bern to Zurich HB costs 25.50
2) SBB ticket from Bern to Zurich Stadelhofen (local rail station), passing through HB, costs 25.50
3) SBB ticket from Bern to Zurich Bellevue (local tram station), passing through HB, costs 31.40

In the third case there is basically a surcharge for the daily Zurich urban ticket.
Does it mean that, with the second ticket, I am only allowed to travel from HB to Stadelhofen by train?
I thought that for urban travel it does not matter what type of transportation you are taking. So could I travel from HB to Stadelhofen by tram with the second ticket?

Thanks

The cost of your ticket depends if there is another party involved (here the zvv).
If you travel only in the sbb (no matter regional or intercity), this ticket will be the cheapest.
When your destination can be reached only by bus or tram (not sbb), the ticket price will be a lot higher (percentage).
In some tickets you can include a dayticket for one or more zones to travel around.

It's stricter than that: you are only allowed to travel from HB to Stadelhofen, AND you are only allowed to travel by train. You can't use trams AND you can't travel to Oerlikon station or Wollishofen station, things you could do with the third option.

With the third ticket you travel from Bern to Zurich and then you take whatever transportation you want in Zurich zone 110 for one entire day. You can get off in Altstetten and go to Stadelhofen with tram n.4, if that pleases you.

Only if you have a urban ticket. When you travel from train station to train station, the SBB sells you a pure railway ticket, which is only valid on SBB.
As an example, try to buy with SBB a ticket from Bern to Zurich Zoo; the cheapest option costs 31 CHF, which is equivalent to train to Zurich + urban ticket, because SBB can't take you to the Zoo without help from ZVV network.

No. See "Fare network and regional transport network" at https://www.sbb.ch/en/travelcards-an...und-trips.html

When I am in your situation I consider purchasing a Tageskarte. Actually, I usually buy the multipack in advance, I get 6 Tageskarten with some discount, each one ending up costing around 52 CHF. I can travel from Zurich to Bern and return, with both city transport networks included, without caring about validity borders or additional purchases, for the price of the base fare Zurich SBB - Bern SBB and return. Usually I move around a bit after some meeting so I always end up saving something

A fourth option would be to buy an SBB ticket from Bern to Altstetten (23 CHF) and then from the smartphone buy a ZVV single Ticket (4,40 CHF) while approaching Altstetten. If you don't need a return ticket you have the flexibility of the third option while saving 4 CHF...

The difference between a ZVV (or VBZ) ticket and SBB ticket is explained quite well on the ZVV website:
Difference between SBB and ZVV tickets.

If you want to use local public transportation when traveling from city to city in Switzerland, SBB offers the City-Ticket, which is also well explained on the SBB website:
SBB City-Ticket

Your assumption that this should work is quite logical. With a ZVV (or VBZ) ticket, you can travel on any transportation (SBB, VBZ, ZVV, Ships, SZU) for the zones you've purchased. This doesn't apply in reverse.

I recommend getting a half tax card and start looking for discounted tickets (sparbillet) , they will be for sale again from June 08th 2020.

The half tax card gets you around much cheaper, even here in zurich you will get a discount (childs tarif).

Thanks for the replies!
FWIW, this was just a specific random example I came up with to understand the pattern, I don't need to minimize the price of exactly this trip
I also intuitively imagined that it's valid only on the SBB network, but wanted to get some official answer for that - and indeed there are some great links here now explaining the thing.