105 posts
Hi Bedibovio and welcome to MySwissAlps!
If the Swiss Half Fare Card (http://www.myswissalps.com/sw isshalffarecard) and the Swiss Travel Pass – 3 days (http://www.myswissalps.com/sw isstravelpass) works out to the same cost then I’d generally for the Swiss Travel Pass – just hop on a train and go (most of the time)!
To make sure you are doing the calculations correctly look here if you haven’t done so:
http://www.myswissalps.com/tr ain/ticketspasses/prac tical/chooserailpass
72625 posts
Thank you. We are arriving in Geneva November 24th and going to Zermatt for 2 nights and then to Lucerne and Zurich. When I did the math it came out about equal. From Zurich we are mainly visiting watch museums for my son. So we were thinking of renting a car to go to Shaffhausen, Basel, Bienne and Chaux der Fonds on the way back to Geneva. Do you think having the car makes sense vs trying to do all those stops by train?
105 posts
It is pretty rare that a car makes sense in Switzerland – unless you are a bigger family splitting the cost then a rail pass would make more sense economically.
Use the SBB timetable to plan out all your trips and see how to works for you: http://www.myswissalps.com/ti metable – trains are super convenient in 95% of situations.
Note the pricing is listed here too but by default it lists the Half Fare Card price so double it for the normal fares if you want to look into that while checking the schedules.
72625 posts
The Swiss transport system is famously efficient. You can get to all the places you mention by train and journeys are rarely more than 2 – 3 hours or so. I would think a Swiss Travel Pass would be more convenient.
Don’t forget that the half fare card has to be purchased first
7104 posts
I fully agree with Luke and 1960man that Swiss public transportation is excellent, and I’d definitely recommend it over hiring a car which comes with quite some disadvantages. Please read about the pros and cons at http://www.myswissalps.com/ca rversustrain.