On Thursday evening, a courier collects the family's bikes. On Saturday, they travel carefree by train to their vacation destination, where the bikes are delivered straight away. This SBB service costs CHF 123; the flat rate is CHF 43, CHF 20 for each bike transported and CHF 30 for e-bikes. If the pick-up point or destination is car-free, an additional CHF 30 is charged per shipment. The price is similar to that offered by Flying Bag. However, this service provider delivers the following day and not the day after next.

The bikes are transported by SBB in delivery vans and most of them make their way to their destination by road. In most cases, it would be far too time-consuming to take the bikes to the nearest train station, load them onto a train there and, if the delivery location does not have a train station, pack them into a van again. At the request of Ride, the SBB media office reports: "The public transport sector currently handles 70 percent of luggage transport across all services, i.e. including bike transport, on average by rail and 30 percent by road."

It is well known and obvious that SBB struggles to cope with large numbers of bicycles on full trains. The same applies to passengers, who have to reserve their bike space in a complex booking process, to say the least, depending on the train connection. Anyone who has ever booked a bike reservation on a train whose terminus is outside Switzerland knows what we are talking about here. For SBB, the large number of bikes on trains is not just an economic problem - a bike takes up about as much space as a passenger, but costs a maximum of CHF 14 plus CHF 2 for the reservation if the journey takes place on an intercity train. There is also the risk of delayed departure if dozens of passengers board the train at a station.

So could it be that SBB wants to reduce the number of bikes on the train with its door-to-door bike service? The answer is honest: "We want to offer travelers who want to travel by bike an additional transport option and thus also help to reduce the load on trains."