Public transport increasingly popular

The chart below really says it all. The green columns indicate increasing numbers of journeys undertaken by rail with the red ones indicating a slight stagnation with regard to those undertaken by bus. However, the blue total column on the extreme right shows that, over the course of 2017, an additional 565,000 journeys were undertaken by local public transport when compared with the previous year.

The chart also shows that, over 2017, some 19.5 million journeys were undertaken by bus, including trips up and down the funicular railway on the Zugerberg. In addition to this, a further 10.5 million journeys were undertaken on the city rail and S-Bahn services. Not included in this figure are journeys taken on long-distance SBB services.

Looking carefully at the statistics, what was of particular note was that passenger numbers were up the most, by 7% in fact, on the Cham-Zug corridor, with more than four million passengers benefiting from the S1 service on this stretch.

While bus services attract twice as many passengers as rail services, the numbers here were stagnating, possibly as a result of cutbacks in services. Experts also put this down to increased volume of traffic in general, leading to the punctuality of bus services being adversely affected, especially around Cham. It was also thought the increasing use of e-bikes was affecting the number of passengers on bus services. 

Nevertheless, use of the bus hubs in Rotkreuz and the city of Zug were up by 2.4% and 3.6% respectively, compared with a decline of -1.9% in Cham, and indeed for the second year running.