BERN. The GA travelcard, the season ticket that unlocks almost every train, bus, boat and tram in the country, will cost CHF 4,095 a year in second class when the new timetable begins on 13 December. It is the first time the pass has crossed the CHF 4,000 mark.
The increase, part of the annual fare adjustment agreed by SBB and the Alliance SwissPass partners, works out at roughly 2.5 per cent on the adult second class card. First class, youth and junior cards rise by similar percentages. The Half Fare travelcard, the discount card on which the whole system rests, is unchanged.
The railways point to costs that have risen faster than passenger revenue: electricity for traction, wages agreed under the collective labour settlements, and the track access charges that pay for the network's expansion. General inflation, at 0.4 per cent, is not among their arguments.
Passenger organisations reacted with weary anger. Pro Bahn, the largest of them, called the timing the worst possible, pointing to commuters who chose the train when fuel was expensive and are now being asked to pay more precisely as petrol gets cheaper. The group wants the federal government to raise its contribution to regional and long distance fares.
The GA is a strange object in Swiss life: part product, part institution. Roughly half a million people hold one, and for its most loyal users, commuters in the big urban belts, it remains cheaper than the sum of its parts. For occasional travellers, the arithmetic has been getting harder for years, which the railways know and fare setters watch nervously.
Transport ministry officials noted that the increase sits within the framework negotiated with the price supervisor, the independent watchdog that signs off on public transport fares. The supervisor's office confirmed it had examined the cost data and accepted the adjustment, while declining to call it welcome.
The political resonance is guaranteed. Parliament returns for the autumn session in September with health premiums and housing costs already crowding the agenda, and a CHF 4,095 GA gives every party a number to put on a poster. Motions demanding a fare freeze are filed after almost every December adjustment; they tend to fail on the question of who pays instead.
Regular travellers can blunt the rise in the usual ways: paying monthly rather than annually, buying through an employer scheme, or switching to the various regional and point to point passes the tariff system offers. The railways themselves quietly promote all three, aware that the headline figure does their marketing no favours.
The new fares apply from the timetable change on Sunday 13 December. Annual cards already valid by then run to their normal expiry at the old price. The first bills at the new rate, and the first posters about them, arrive in the same week.