World Radio Switzerland

Car ownership in Switzerland remains relatively high compared to other European countries (KEYSTONE/Steffen Schmidt)

There’s more and more traffic on the roads but 600,000 households or one million people in Switzerland still don’t have a car. Some simply can’t afford one. About a third deliberately choose not to have one. Some groups are calling for financial incentives such as subsidies for public transport for people who don’t have a car. Here’s Dieter Steiner of the Car Free Club of Switzerland.

STEINER: “Obviously if you live without a car, you do less damage to the environment, you contribute less to the climate change with C02 emissions and so on and so forth.”

The Federal Statistics Office conducts a survey on transport every five years. At the last count, it questioned 33,000 households about the travelling they did on a given day. The figures are then scaled up to give a national figure. The percentage of households without a car has dropped from 31% in 1984 to just under 19% in 2005.

Living without a car is largely an urban phenomenon. Cities in the German-speaking part of the country score most highly. Basel tops the rankings with 52% of households without a car. Dieter Steiner says environmental issues weigh less heavily in the French-speaking part of the country. But Marc Gindraux, head of mobility section at the Federal Statistics Office, believes there is another explanation.

GINDRAUX: “One of the main reasons is that public transport is better developed in the big urban areas of German speaking Switzerland than it is in the French speaking areas. Zurich and Basel have particularly well developed public transport systems.”

Eight years ago, a non-governmental organisation called RetroTraffic launched an initiative to reduce car traffic by half. The move failed by a large majority. Votes to introduce car-free Sundays have also failed at the polls. But undeterred, RetroTraffic is launching an initiative in six cities. It has already collected signatures in Basel, Lucerne, Winterthur, Zurich and St Gallen and will start in Geneva in March. 

Director Thomas Stahel says RetroTraffic is demanding that the share of public transport and transport by bike and foot increases by 10% over next 10 years and and that there is no expansion of road building in these cities.

So how does Switzerland compare with its European neighbours when it comes to the question of car ownership.

GINDRAUX: “In terms of the number of cars per household, Switzerland is relatively high but not at the head of list. When it comes to mobility it is difficult to make comparison because few countries make similar surveys. But the Swiss are one of the biggest users of public transport and have one of best developed public transport systems.”

The Car Free Club supports projects such as car-free neighbourhoods in some cities. The next government survey of mobility habits is due out in 2010.