Transport – Facts and Figures

Switzerland has a dense and reliable network. 

  • Switzerland has a  road network around 73,000km long, 5,200km of railway lines, a 21,500km public transport network and 1,000km of mountain railways. Swiss airline flight routes cover 551,700km.
  • The Swiss travel more by train than any other nation in the world, clocking up an average of 2,400 km per person every year within Switzerland.
  • At an altitude of 3,454 metres, the Jungfraujoch in the canton of Bern is the highest railway station in Europe.
  • Switzerland has around 1,800 tunnels and 28,000 public transport stops.
  • The country's greatest engineering feat is the 57km-long Gotthard base tunnel – the longest rail tunnel in the world – which opened in 2016. Every day, 325 trains travel through the Gotthard tunnel at speeds of up to 250km/h.
  • Switzerland has three international airports (Zurich, Geneva and Basel), 11 regional airports, 49 airfields and 24 heliports.
  • The country's six biggest airports handle almost 58 million passengers per year.
  • In 2018, some 6.1 million motor vehicles were registered in Switzerland, of which 6 million were cars.
  • Switzerland’s sea-going (merchant) fleet is based in Basel.
  • With 15 vessels, the Lake Lucerne Navigation Company has Europe’s largest fleet of self-propelled ships operating on inland waterways.
  • With 2,028 trains passing through every day, the railway line between Zurich main railway station and Zurich Langstrasse is the busiest in the country.
  • Between 1980 and 2018, the volume of goods freighted by rail and road across the Swiss Alps more than doubled to 39 million tonnes.
  • The Vitznau-Rigi line, which opened in 1871, is the oldest mountain railway in Europe.
  • The No. 10 route, operated by Baselland Transport (BLT), is the longest tram line in Europe.  Running from Dornach to Rodersdorf, it covers 25km, and takes in three cantons (Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt, Solothurn) and two countries (Switzerland and France).
  • The automated M2 line of the Lausanne Métro climbs 338 metres, with inclines as steep as 12% in some places.  This is a world-first for rubber-tyred underground trains.