Hacker News Reader

Comment by johannes1234321 | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat off topic, but still:

> long-distance busses (like the one between Munich and Zürich)

Zurich is too deep in Switzerland to be covered anyways. (Salzburg, Kufstein, Basel Bad Bf, etc. however are in Austria/Switzerland but part of German rail rates and included in 9€ tickets)

And that DB bus doesn't exist anymore since the new electrified railway line to Lindau was opened two years ago, as Munucih-Zurich got way faster by train. (I guess Flixbus still offers it but Flix isn't part of 9€ either)

View on HN

From Zürich to Munich by direct train is now 221 minutes instead of 245 minutes. It'z faster, but I wouldn't call it way faster.

By bus it's 225 minutes, but the bus is often up to 30 minutes late.

(I haven't yet had the good fortune of visiting Europe).

I can see why you said the train takes 221 minutes.

However, "225 minutes" for bus? I know y'all are known for punctuality, but are buses in Switzerland/Germany that precise?!

Also, is it customary to tell such durations in minutes, as opposed to something like "4 hour 45 minutes" or "4 and 3-quarter hours"?

Where I'm at, nothing runs on time unfortunately. Over here I sometimes feel arrival times of trains should just say "morning" instead of showing an actual time like 8:20 am.

In 2021 91.9 percent of the trains in Switzerland were on time (tolerance is 3 minutes)

Source:

https://news.sbb.ch/artikel/109510/puenktlichkeit-2021-zweit...

What about buses? Are they also super-punctual?

Yes. All jokes about Swiss punctuality are true.

I say this as someone who lived in Zurich for two years.

In cities, there are many bus lanes to bypass traffic. And they circulate several times per hour, 6 or more.

Even if sometimes they are not punctual, the density saves you and you rarely think about it.

Not only are there lanes to bypass traffic, almost more important is that the traffic lights are controlled to prioritize the busses. Thus if a bus comes the traffic lights turn and hold green so that the cars in front of the bus can clear the crossing for the bus.

And there are dense schedules, so that if one bus is delayed to some problem the next one is close by, thus gap is little.

That was the integration into the Swiss train schedule.

They improved the line (electrification which allows better trains, moving tran station in Lindau from the island with old town to the shore etc.) in the first year they went from 4h30 to 4h. Where the trains were standing for about half an hour at St. Magrethen at the Austrian-Swiss border. In 2021 they improved signalling and adjusted schedules and got rid of that half an hour wait, so it's now at 3h35.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com