Passenger transport performance
In 2022, the land transport performance still remained below pre-pandemic level. In total, on the road, rail and cable car network 122.7 billion person-kilometres were travelled – 11% more than in 2021 but still 11% less than in 2019, the year before the COVID pandemic started.
Of the overall performance, in 2022 three quarters, i.e., 91.0 billion person-kilometres, were accounted for by private motorised transport (cars, motorcycles and private buses). This was nearly five times the number of person-kilometres accounted for by the railways (19.3 billion). Active mobility (on foot and by bicycle) accounted for 7.8 billion person-kilometres.
Since 1970, the transport performance of motorised private transport and public transport has more than doubled.
In the first "Covid year" of 2020, passenger transport saw an unprecedented decline. The decrease was particularly significant in air transport, but also in rail transport. In the two decades before the pandemic, the following main trends can be identified when comparing transport and population change.
- In the years 2000 to 2010, rail transport grew significantly faster than the population. In that decade, major infrastructure expansions (especially the "Rail 2000" project) led to extended services with more frequent trains and shorter journey times. After 2010, rail transport performance increased at a somewhat slower pace.
- Shortly after the turn of the millennium, passenger numbers in air transport initially fell, primarily as a result of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and the grounding of the Swissair airline. From around 2005 onwards, however, air transport increased considerably more than the population in most years, which was probably also due to the expansion of low-cost airlines.
- The trend in private motorised road transport was somewhat less dynamic. However, between 2000 and 2019, this also increased slightly more than did the population. This was mainly due to greater transport performance by foreign passenger cars on Swiss territory. In contrast, the distances travelled per capita by the Swiss resident population remained more or less stable.
In 2022, private motorised transport realised a kilometre performance of 57.0 billion vehicle-kilometres. This corresponds to an increase of 6% compared to 2021 and a decrease of 8% compared to 2019, the year before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For railways the corresponding value in 2022 was 209 million train-kilometres (+2% compared to 2021 / +4% compared to 2019). In the passenger air transport segment, the use of means of transport is usually expressed in terms of the number of flight movements (take-offs and landings). In the scheduled and charter flight segment, 408 957 flight movements were registered in 2023 (+15% compared to 2022 / –13% compared to 2019).
