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Fair ticket price for shift workers

nicholasbeta

Shift workers, e.g. at hospitals, may go to work in the evening and go home the next morning. If they regularly leave work after 0500, assuming they can get a day-return ticket, is there any arrangement so they can avoid needing to buy another ticket? [It occurs to me, again assuming there is such a thing as return ticket (hin und zuruck) they could by the ticket when when they leave work and could use it to go to work in the evening.]
In short - has fair ticket pricing for shift workers been considered?

RolandP

Hello nicholasbeta

Good day…

People that regularly make use of public transit services are anyway in the possession of a seasonal ticket valid 24/7 and do not use point-to-point tickets. And, for fare network tickets for regional services, SBB is anyway not in charge for ticket offers.

Kind regards,
Rolabd

RedBaron

nicholasbeta If they regularly leave work after 0500, assuming they can get a day-return ticket, is there any arrangement so they can avoid needing to buy another ticket?

Not really getting your point: Any ‘return’ ticket is a day pass (or 24h ticket within the ZVV fare network), regardless whether it’s a zone based or a point-to-point ticket. And that day pass usually costs exactly twice the price of two single journey tickets (or maybe a little less in a few specific zone-based cases).

If buying both single tickets before leaving for work in the evening (once you’re sure you’re fit and actually going), in some cases you’d even have the advantage of opting for a supersaver ticket for the return journey in the morning.

But as Roland already wrote above, shift work usually means no home office, therefore 5 days of commute per week. That’s where monthly or yearly passes/travelcards for commuting would generally be more ‘fair’ than buying individual single or return tickets every time. Regardless whether it’s a night or day shift.

Krist

A return ticket is priced as two singles. So wether you buy a “return” ticket, or buy two singles (because you return the next day) the price is the same.
There are no discounts applied to a “day return” as in some other countries. So that is maybe the source of your confusion.

Anyway, most regular users of public transit in Switzerland will indeed get a pass. And I know that eg at the Inselspital in Bern for most staff getting a transit pass is cheaper than renting a parking spot…

nicholasbeta

Thanks to all three responders. Actually I was trying to pick Swiss brains (an English idiom!) for arguments for 24h tickets in UK, where a shift worker has begun a petition because she claims she is charged double when she works overnight. Even the Swiss rules seem complicated, but the British ticketing rules are Byzantine. Someone working for the government is promising to simplify them, but I’ll believe it when I see it. UK railways are privatised into several regions, and together they issue at last count 44 or 45 different railcards. Prices here are comparable to Swiss, e.g. for given distance UK ticket with ⅓ off for railcard would be of similar order to Swiss with Halbtax. This despite average income in CH being about twice that in UK. I have estimated that UK railways employ 40% more staff per km than SBB, because of manning ticket barriers and patrolling stations, and that must add to ticket costs.

Krist

I suspected that the UK had something to do with it. In the UK it is common for a day return to be only a bit more expensive than a single. However on the continent we practice “single leg pricing”, something some UK railways have now started to do as well.
Under this system a return ticket from A to B and back is just twice the price of a single ticket, and thus there is no discrimination of people for whom the return trip is the next day.

But another difference is that the system is fully integrated. You can buy a ticket from pretty much any bus stop in Switzerland to any other bus stop, and the ticket will cover the whole trip, even if there are several other buses, trains, cable cars and trams (and in one weird edge case, a helicopter) involved…
An the price schedule is such that it encourages people to get a pass, so most regular transport users do not pay for individual tickets anyway.

And we do not bother with things that increase friction, like gates, barriers, and making everyone show their pass when boarding a bus…