I was curious about the Rail Plus supplement to the Swiss half-fare (Halbtax) card. The SBB web site says that on a journey crossing the border from Switzerland to a neighbouring country, it gives you (in addition to the 50% Halbtax discount in Switzerland), a 25% discount for the part of the journey abroad.
This makes it clear that it gives no discount for journeys that are completely within the neighbouring countries (they also say that in Germany/Austria you automatically get a 25% discount with your Swiss Halbtax with no need for Rail Plus, not sure if that applies only to border-crossing journeys, but that's another matter).
But the part unclear to me - if your journey out of switzerland is further into a neighbouring country, it likely involves changing train within that country. Does the discount apply also for the part after changing trains outside of Switzerland (given that you are still on the same journey/ticket)?
From what I have seen when trying to buy tickets online and selecting with or without Rail Plus, it appears that the discount only applies up to the first connection outside of Switzerland. But perhaps it's not the way to buy those tickets? It sounds odd, given how close the train change can be after the border.
For instance: Italy, to which I will be going next week. Regular trains from Switzerland to Italy (Cisalpino) all stop at Milano, there you have to change trains. So by this sense, a Rail Plus card on a journey to anywhere in Italy would only give you a 3 CHF discount on the short stretch between the Ticino border and Milano. Can it be that for Italy, Rail Plus is so useless?
as far as I know the RAIL PLUS is valid also for connecting trains.
Thats the same like with the 25% discount for Halb-Tax-owners for trips to german or austrian destinantions.
So you can get the discount for instance for a trip from Bellinzona to Reggio di Calabria no matter how often you have to change the train.
Important is only, that either the departure place or the destination is in Switzerland.
Here in Basel its a bit tricky. If you like to get as a Halb-Tax-owner a ticket to Germany with 25% discount you have to choose the Basel SBB as the swiss part of the trip. Basel Badischer Bahnhof (german station) would not be valid for this, because the german station - though its in Switzerland - is allready part of the german railways system :-)
It's not how often you change trains that matters. What matters is the journey that your ticket entitles you to make. So as long as you get a single ticket for the entire journey, the discount counts throughout. If you break your journey up into bits and buy a ticket for each bit individually then you lose that advantage.
Using a single though ticket, you can even stop over places en-route and continue your journey some days later without having to get a separate ticket. This called "unterbrechen" in German and you have to inform the ticket inspector who will then clip your ticket in a different way to make it clear that the journey was not completed and the second half can still be used.
Normally, a railway station or a rail-approved travel agency can issue a ticket from any UIC station to any other UIC station via any reasonable route. Whether or not there is a direct train connecting those two stations via that route doesn't matter.
This interpretation of "journey" in the context also makes more sense to me, so Rail Plus is actually really worthwhile.
So apparently the SBB online ticket ordering system just does not take this into account. Whatever the destination in Italy chosen there, checking the Rail Plus discount only reduces the price by same 3CHF.
I guess I will have to ask at the Reisebüro at the station to get the discounted tickets to Italy then...
This is surprising, and really neat! So with Rail Plus, one could theoretically make a tour of e.g. Italy, spending a day or two in each of Milano, Firenze, Napoli, (and going north again) Roma and Bologna, and get a 25% discount for essentially all the train rides within Italy, as long as one starts and ends in Switzerland?
I'm set for a more relaxing week's visit just of north-central Italy, just waiting for it after the packed weeks at work... But it's definitely nice to know.
Essentially yes, but the other factor is that the route must be "reasonable". I guess it is reasonable to travel to Napoli via Roma and Bologna so you would buy a ticket to Napoli via those places. However, if you start looking at curious detours or routes that come through the same place twice or more, then that is no longer a reasonable route. What you can do however is get a second ticket for the add-on bits, for which of course you cannot use the discount, but still do the long-distance travels on the basic discounted ticket.
So on Saturday two weeks ago, the weekend before my vacation (which was awesome), I went to the Reisebüro at Zürich HB to make sure and get my tickets.
I asked the ticket officer about this, and was told that generally , indeed (as you would logically expect, and you folks here confirmed), Rail Plus is valid for journeys with connections abroad, and you can even split the journey if it is reasonable.
But then the officer explained that as of over a year, the Italian national railways (Ferrovie dello Stato) have changed their system somewhat, and since then it is an exception. Thus, when going to Italy, the Rail Plus card only gives you a discount for the ride on the train that started in Switzerland, and you have to pay full price for any connecting trains there to continue your journey.
However, it is not that useless after all, as I also found out that the Cisalpino does, in fact, once a day continue further south from Milano to Bologna and Florence. I have not found that connections myself online in the schedule book, because at this stretch (Milano - Bologna - Florence), the Cisalpino additionally takes the code of an Italian Eurostar, and is listed with that ES code instead of a CIS code in the schedules. I used that train - CIS 24, also known as ES 9447 between Florence and Milano - on my way back. A lovely 7 hour journey through the Apennines and the Alps (the Bologna-Milano stretch is quite boring though).
There are also night trains, of course. Using the nightly Euronight LUNA (EN 313/314), you can get from Zürich all the way to Rome in one train with the Rail Plus discount. But that ends at Rome, so you can definitely not use the Rail Plus discount all the way to Reggio di Calabria.
Just thought I'd clear out the confusion and unclear mis(information) I brought unto this thread. -- Tom
I wanted to add, for people travelling to Germany, you can buy your ticket online at the DB.de website, and if you have a halbtax, you are allowed to choose: Bahncard 25 as your discount.
So you can book everything online, including the discount, as long as you start or come back to Switzerland, for the halbtax to be valid on the German part.
When you get checked, you can show your halbtax for the Bahncard 25% discount. I asked the German DB this, and they said this is how you can do it.
Thanks for the advice. Makes sense given that they give the same discount, but I wasn't sure if one card is valid with a ticket for the other.
Though I must ask - if you're in Switzerland traveling to Germany and back, why wouldn't you just book the trip through SBB and select Halbtax? It will then automatically give you the 50% discount in Switzerland and 25% in Germany.
Im not sure about this. A DB clippie once told me if I have a Halbtax then strictly speaking my ticket should say so. It has something to do with the way they charge back for the discount or something. As you cannot get the DB website or a DB ticket machine to acknowledge your halbtax it strictly means you should buy your ticket at the counter. However in practice the DB clippies know this and semi-officially turn a blind eye if you pass off your halbtax for a BC25. However strictly speaking and if they want to be nasty they could catch you out there. This is what the DB clppie told me and IMHO it may or may not be true as these international rules are so complex theyeven catch the professionals out sometimes.
Can I just chime in and say that we have had great assistance from the SBB office with complicated enquiries for various train trips...they will do quotes, connections and options for you over the counter, no problem...
Just don't go Saturday or Sunday mornings, the queue can be a mile long...
The SBB office in Stadelhofen (Zurich) has always been staffed with english-speaking customer service persons and is rarely busy...the one in Zurich HB is usually quite busy but likewise fine as long as you don't mind waiting...
The price variations can be quite large between last-minute and pre-paid trips...we did Zurich-Rome day trip with three adults, two children and an 'infant' and the CIS outbound, LUNA overnight back again - the night train was very cheap...about half the price of the day train...and the halbtax was included but the 'full price' ticket wasn't that much more with the special deal they had going...
Also, if you return on a Sunday you can often get a better deal - we priced zurich-Frankfurt last week and if we went on Thursday and returned Sunday it was half the price of a Thursday-Saturday ticket...our friendly SBB office seemed to know all the tricks on how to make the computer generate the cheapest and most convenient travel plan...
This is useful for people to know. I've travelled from Switzerland to Austria before on the train and of course the 25% discount was applied for the Austrian part of the journey. Now something just struck me- if for example, you wanted to take the TGV from Basel to Paris, Basel SBB would be seen as a French (terminus) Station. But if you bought a ticket from Muttenz to Paris, then you'd be entitled to 25% of the french part of the journey- you wouldn't even have to get on a train at Muttenz as there's no way your ticket would be checked 100% of the time in this short journey... surely this would be worht paying a couple of francs for! Hmm, food for thought!
Yes, that is kind of what he said: he said, you have no way of selecting halbtax, and the discount is the same, so our officers know this and will link the two together (the halbtax and the discount), and that is fine.
Of course, I do not know if the German DB is as strict as the SBB in practice...
The reason for booking on the DB site, is that they have good Europe specials. So you can get from anywhere in Switzerland to anywhere in Germany for 34 Euro one way. This means you pay nothing for the Swiss part of the journey. Normal price is 39, but 34 is with the halbtax discount on the German part. You need to book 3 months in advance roughly, as the discount only applies for a few tickets per train; and the ticket is bound to a specific traintime!
Just to update this ... I'm thinking of going to Stuttgart for a weekend and asked at BBB (the German station) whether I could use a halbtax card to travel from there. They said yes.
Online using www.sbb.ch a return is around 115CHF cheapest ticket for the weekend I was looking at. Online on www.bahn.de it was about 15CHF less. Using a machine at BBB it was even cheaper. The latter two require me to say I've got a Bahncard25 but when I actually want the ticket I'll go to the ticket office and ask if (a) they charge extra for paying there instead of the machine and if they do (b) can I definitely select Bahncard25 and show my Halbtax.
I don't actually have my Halbtax card yet as I'm going to apply for the Halbtax Visa. I don't need the Visa card but it saves me 25CHFand it doesn't say anywhere that I actually have to use it
It's generally cheaper (if you can) to buy the ticket in the country that has the most expensive part of the journey. This is because the exchange rates the railways use for cross charging are not the best. They factor in a sufficient margin so they don't have to adjust prices all the time.
and these don't run anymore either... But I don't see any indication of this changing:
At least according to the price difference given for online booking when ticking Rail Plus. With the only exception being the 16 CHF difference for the daily Geneva-Venice train, in any other journey it's worth no more than 3 CHF now?
In contrast to some of the posts above (including mine!), I've just attempted to buy my return ticket from Basel to Stuttgart.
At Basel BB they would sell a ticket, although the starting point would be marked as Basel SBB. The discount wasn't great and the price at the counter was the same as if using the SBB website and entering the fact you have a Halbtax card.
Although it's been stated above that one can use the German website bahn.de to book, and select Bahncard 25, I was told at the counter that this isn't allowed, as the Halbtax only gives discounts on non-special offer tickets, which the web (and the German ticket machines) routinely price.
I emailed Deutschebahn about doing this (showing Halbtax to a ticket inspector after buying a Bahncard 25 reduction) and got the following reply
A very friendly DB ticket inspector told me about the Auslandsermässigungen ( applicable Foreign Discounts ) and confirmed that both HalbTax and the GA apply as BC25 . I researched and then bought my tickets online.
I was recently challenged on the Austrian and German trains as my tickets had BC25 as the fare basis. A printout from this site about the TEE Tariff ( crude EN here ) together with the GA cleared it all up.