One alternative is significantly faster Public transport is the slowest in these cities

Buses are fastest in St. Gallen, while public transport is slowest in Geneva. On average, trains and buses in Switzerland run only slightly faster than in Germany. The reason is surprising.

First an estimation question: How fast do you travel by public transport on average in Switzerland? The answer can be found a little further down.

Switzerland is proud of its public transport and uses it a lot. What a difference to its neighboring countries, many people think. A study now shows that Swiss buses and streetcars are not that much faster than local public transport in Germany.

The liberal economic think tank Avenir Suisse has determined how fast buses, streetcars and light rail systems move in cities in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The authors of the study did not carry out the measurements themselves. According to their own information, they evaluated 100,000 routes on Google. The decisive factor was the time from door to door, including the necessary walking distances, waiting times and transfers.

St. Gallen in the lead, Geneva brings up the rear

The city of St. Gallen has the fastest public transport. Buses in the eastern Swiss city travel at an average speed of 9.3 km/h. It takes the longest to get to your destination by bus or streetcar in Geneva: they travel at an average speed of 7.2 km/h. The cities in Germany and Austria included in the study are also in between.

On average, inner-city buses and trains in Switzerland travel at 8.3 km/h, which is only 0.5 km/h faster than those in German and Austrian cities. According to Avenir Suisse, adults travel 4.8 kilometers per hour on foot in the city. Public transport is therefore not even twice as fast.

On the one hand, this is due to traffic in the cities. But how close the stops are to each other also plays a major role. The more often a bus or streetcar stops to let passengers on and off, the lower the average speed.

The denser the network, the slower the bus

This shows that a dense network of stops is convenient because people only have to walk a small part of their journey. However, this makes public transport slower overall. According to Avenir Suisse, a dense network also means that public transport users change trains more frequently, which also increases travel time.

According to the study, it also plays a role whether buses and streetcars have their own lanes, which is only the case in larger cities. Where this is the case, public transport is less affected by traffic jams and makes faster progress.

A low average speed does not mean that an urban transport service is not efficient, emphasizes study author Lukas Rühli. As an example, he compares Geneva at the bottom of the league with Freiburg im Breisgau (D) and Linz (A). The three cities have roughly the same number of inhabitants, but Geneva is much more densely populated and therefore connects significantly more people than the transport services in the southern German city and the city in Upper Austria.

The bicycle beats them all

The dense public transport networks in Swiss cities also mean that people there take the bus or streetcar more often for short distances than those in Germany and Austria. People in Lausanne are the quickest to take public transport: no wonder, the city is located on a steep slope, and the bus or metro make it much easier to overcome the difference in altitude.

The fastest way for people to reach their destination in cities is by bike. The average speed with this means of transportation is 16 km/h. This does not include e-bikes. These are likely to be even faster, especially on longer journeys.

The study only touches on cars. In the best-case scenario, cars reach the highest average speed by far at 30 km/h. During rush hour, however, drivers in many cities only make progress at walking pace. The time it takes to find a parking space is completely unpredictable. When choosing a car in the city, other factors also play the main role, such as the car protecting its occupants from the weather and the influence of other people.