A carless city in the Alps

Last year, I went to Zermatt, Switzerland to visit a friend and I found a town that doesn't allow cars. 

Zermatt is a tourist town with a permanent population of about 5,000 people but with a tourist population several times that. It's a popular skiing, hiking and mountain climbing destination at 1600 meters altitude and to prevent anything from obscuring the view of the Matterhorn, they limit combustion-engine vehicles mostly to construction equipment and emergency vehicles. There are a few little, electric shuttles (as seen below) and taxis that drive around the town taking people from place to place, but most people walk. Even the garbage trucks are electric. There are also a couple of electro-bus routes. 

Most people arrive by the cog-rail (AKA rack rail) and another one (seen below) goes up to the observatory at Gornergrat at 3,089 meters up. The cogs allow it to climb a steeper grade, though it goes slow and is a bit rough.

The town also has a furnicular railway and of course a lot of gondolas to get people up the mountain to the ski areas. 

People also get around by bike, but most that I saw were riding very slowly. And they all had little plastic tubes to carry skis around.

Elsewhere in Switzerland, I saw tons of bike-friendly and urbanist development. There were rows and rows of bikes parked at the train station. There were runnels on the stairs around apartments.

There were so many paths that went everywhere all with abundant signage. The below photo is of a bike path, not a road where bikes are allowed, but that wide thing is for bikes and pedestrians. There was a playground on the train. 

Here's an old phone booth turned into a little library. 

Bike racks on the back of intercity buses.

Finally, here's a photo of the Niwärch Stollen, at 1379 m, it's one of the longest bike ped tunnels in the world. We did see at least one cyclist pass us. The tunnel has a great history. There's an aqueduct from the glaciers to a set of fields near Ausserberg. It's several centuries old and used to go around the mountain using trenches connected by hollowed-out half logs, Gilligan's Island style. But in 1971 they built a tunnel to bypass that and so the purpose of the tunnel is irrigation. You can still hike along the old trench, which we did, even if it's a little terrifying in places. But the views are worth it.

The tunnel is pitch black until the end because it makes a 90 degree turn at one end - which a train tunnel would never do.

 

Comments

[drumz]

I would need some convincing to use that trail "bridge".

Anyway, one of the times I felt very jealous of someone else's multi-modalness is when we flew into Munich and then took the train to the Alpine Town where we were visiting a relative. Couple guys got on the train with their bikes and attached snowboards for a late season snowboard run.

Imagine just biking with your snowboard from your Munich home out to skiing via train.

[Pepper Burly]

Great Vacation! I'm totally jelly. I loved all the pictures and caption. Amazing country.