Missed Connections

SoCalDana

We will be traveling next March with a Half Fare Card and will be booking routes that include transfers from trains to busses and busses to trains. Our question is: if we book a train to bus journey on the SBB app, and we are late getting to the bus, is our bus ticket still valid for the next bus that comes along? And same for the reverse: if we take a bus and miss the train we ticketed on the SBB app, will our ticket be good for the next train going to our destination? Thanks for the help!

RolandP

Hello SoCalDana

There is no general answer to your question.

If you travel with a travel pass, a travel card, a day pass, a regular route ticket (point-to-point) ticket, you can travel with any connection.

If you travel on a Supersaver ticket (which we do not recommend for sightseeing or when arriving by air), you can take the next possible connection IF it was the operator’s fault (late train, late bus, misconnection). If you miss the connection because you were late at the station, or you booked two single tickets with unrealistic transfers, then it is your fault and the Supersaver ticket is no longer valid.

Kind regards,
Roland

SoCalDana

Thank you for your quick response. To clarify and specify: we are using Swiss Half Fare Cards, and the best example of our concern is our planned trip from Zürich to Vaduz. We can purchase a combination train and bus ticket on SBB, but need to store our luggage at the Sargans station. The allotted time on the SBB ticket summary to get from train to bus is 3 minutes–not enough time to stop and store luggage AND get to the bus. So, will the next bus accept our ticket, or should we separate the fares and book the train separately from the bus, and thereby eliminate the problem?

RedBaron

SoCalDana The allotted time on the SBB ticket summary

What do you mean exactly by that? From what you wrote, you haven’t purchased a ticket yet, therefore you also can’t hold whatever “ticket summary” yet. You probably simply mean the online timetable, right?

Should you consider a supersaver ticket for the entire ZRH-Vaduz journey (if available), which is strictly tied to the selected train/bus including that 3 minutes transfer in Sargans, then you obviously wouldn’t have enough time for storing your luggage there as you’d need to catch that specific bus with that ticket. So this is the only scenario where you’d need two separate supersaver tickets, if available for both legs at all.

Any other ticket type for that journey, which is either a point-to-point ticket or a saver day pass, will be valid the entire calendar day on any connection. So in this case, after storing your luggage, you could simply take the following bus in Sargans with the same ticket.

RolandP

SoCalDana

If I were to visit Switzerland for the very first time, I would not even bother with going to Vaduz. There is no difference to Switzerland other than black car plates and people talking a distinct German dialect that is only recognisable by native German speakers.
The castle? Well no visitors allowed. And, we have many castles in Switzerland as well that you could even visit.

Krist

So you are planning to go to Zurich to Vaduz, storing your luggage in Sargans. That suggests that you are planning to spend just enough time in Vaduz to find out that indeed there is nothing there worth the trip, return to Sargans, and then continue to somewhere else?

In that case the ticket you would need would be Zurich - Sargans - Vaduz - Sargans - Final destination. You never need multiple tickets in Switzerland, no matter how complicated the trip you plan. And normal tickets are for a route, not a train. So you do not buy a ticket for “Train X then bus Y”, but for a route, and the ticket permits you to use all services on that route.

But the cheapest option for this is then probably going to be a day pass…