Being stuck together in vacation traffic jams is part of the collective travel experience in Switzerland. Until now, however, we did not know how much tourist traffic is actually on our roads and railways. Researchers at HSLU are now providing facts, figures and data.
Good Friday morning: the avalanche of traffic slowly rolls towards the Gotthard north portal. At the ticket office of the Gotthard service station, you can hear dialects from various cantons and languages from all over Europe. Meanwhile, passengers and luggage are packed tightly together in the overcrowded southbound trains. The earliest they can move again is in Bellinzona. Everyone wants to go in the same direction. The roads and tracks are full. It feels like there are only "tourists" on the road this morning. But until recently, nobody knew how high their share of the total Swiss traffic volume actually is. And we also didn’t know how many of the travellers on our roads and railways were from Switzerland, who was coming from abroad to spend their vacations here and who was simply passing through Switzerland.
So far, discussions on transport policy have therefore been more or less flying blind. Although the figures on tourist traffic are actually available, they are fragmented. Sometimes they are held by the federal government, sometimes they are collected by the tourism industry. This was a thorn in the side of Uri Councillor of States Josef Dittli. He wanted to change this with a postulate. The Federal Council then sent HSLU researchers led by Timo Ohnmacht to establish the facts.
"As a representative of a mountain canton with vacation destinations such as Andermatt on the one hand, but also with a lot of transit traffic and traffic jams on the other, I wanted a reliable data basis. Only if we know how travelers are traveling can we create good mobility solutions that reduce congestion and make tourist destinations more accessible."
A number puzzle
The HSLU researchers put these different pieces of the puzzle together to form an overall picture: They took figures from thematic census surveys, transalpine and cross-border surveys and interviews with industry representatives such as Switzerland Tourism. Figures on mobility behavior from data brokers, for example, were deliberately omitted. This is because the data should be freely accessible and collected regularly over the long term.
In addition, they first had to define who is actually part of tourist traffic. Representatives from science, the authorities and the tourism industry jointly agreed: tourist traffic takes place outside of everyday life, e.g. a vacation in Ticino, a ski weekend in Davos or a day trip to Geneva. If the activity takes place during leisure time, but as part of everyday life, it is leisure travel. This includes, for example, the weekly trip to the tennis court or the regular visit to the grandparents.
Timo Ohnmacht and his team came back with a calculation formula and an initial figure: 25%. This is the proportion of all kilometers traveled in Switzerland that are attributable to tourists from Switzerland and abroad. Commuter and shopping traffic and other mobility purposes account for just under half of all these so-called "passenger kilometers". The remaining quarter is leisure travel by Swiss citizens. Timo Ohnmacht explains: "If we consider that tourist traffic generates long travel distances, the high proportion of tourist traffic is not surprising."
Unequal distribution, unequal value creation
Another figure: 265 million. That’s how many trips use our transport infrastructure every year. This corresponds to 720,000 people every day, but these travelers are distributed or concentrated very differently both in terms of time and geography.
Back to Uri: a particularly large amount of transit traffic is concentrated here, i.e. travelers who only pass through Switzerland to get to their destination. They usually generate little economic added value. "Switzerland is a traffic barrier in Europe, separating the Germans and Dutch from the Adriatic. A clear view of the Mediterranean!" says Timo Ohnmacht with a grin. Through traffic through Switzerland accounts for around 13% of tourist traffic - almost 4% of all kilometers travelled in Switzerland.
The supposed hotspot
By far the largest share of tourist traffic, namely around 45%, is accounted for by the Swiss population. Almost the same number of kilometers are covered by travelers from abroad who are on vacation in Switzerland. Anyone who thinks that the majority of these kilometers are covered by road and rail in Uri or Graubünden is mistaken: the top destinations are Zurich, Bern and Vaud, followed by Valais and Eastern Switzerland.
So should we be looking at the Gubrist rather than the Gotthard when discussing the traffic congestion caused by tourism? "No," says the mobility researcher. "In absolute terms, the Gotthard actually only plays a minor role. But the high concentration of many people traveling on a few roads within a small time window can be a real burden, especially for the population living there." In Zurich, where traffic is better distributed geographically and in terms of time, this is less noticeable.
Switzerland as a rail travel destination - a myth?
Timo Ohnmacht and his team have also calculated how tourists travel in Switzerland: Three quarters of tourist traffic is covered by "motorized private transport" - i.e. car, motorcycle, etc. Only around a quarter of travelers use public transport.
"In relative terms, the proportion of train passengers in tourist traffic is really small," says Timo Ohnmacht. The transport sociologist cites various reasons: A lack of public transport affinity among foreign travelers, an arduous material battle in winter sports tourism, a Gotthard Base Tunnel that could not be frequented as planned for a while or a trans-European rail network with a lot of transfer connections that cannot really compete with flights.
This accumulates in particular with the transit traffic already mentioned. And this is particularly crucial for a place like Uri: foreign tourists who only pass through Switzerland only use public transport for three out of every 100 kilometers. The remaining 97 kilometers are covered by car. "That’s the local impact," summarizes Timo Ohnmacht.
Making the effects visible
Transport has many facets. This is why transport policy also requires a multi-layered and differentiated discussion. With the "actual state" that the HSLU researchers have now been able to calculate, this can be conducted anew. There is a new factual basis that can be used by authorities and politicians, the tourism industry and not least the electorate to shape Switzerland’s future tourism transport policy. And even more importantly for Timo Ohnmacht: "We will be able to measure success better in future". Because every five years, when the federal government conducts its new thematic census surveys, DETEC will reapply its calculation formula. In this way, developments can be made visible.
For Timo Ohnmacht, it is precisely this impact that spurs him on in his work in research and teaching: "When I saw that the Tagesschau was reporting on our project and the findings, I knew we had done it right!"
