Study crowns Swiss city as home to the world’s most expensive metro ride

A new global ranking has revealed that Lausanne is home to the most expensive metro system in the world. Copenhagen Metro ranked second, and the London Underground third.

Remitly ranks Lausanne the most expensive metro ticket

Remitly has found that the Lausanne metro system is the most expensive globally for a single ticket, according to its Global Metro Affordability Index.

Of the 94 cities considered, the city in the French-speaking canton of Vaud has the highest ticket price, coming in at 5,85 Swiss francs (6,36 euros or 7,22 US dollars) for a single journey. That’s almost 400 times more than the cheapest ticket in the ranking.

If you’ve ever travelled on the m2 metro line in Lausanne, you may remember that it goes down some impressive hills, and is often labelled the steepest metro lines in the world - and it’s driverless, too.

However, the Remitly ranking did not account for all ticket types offered by the local operators Transports publics de la région lausannoise (tl) and Mobilis, Vaud’s public transport fare network. Mobilis explains on its website that ticket prices vary depending on the number of zones you plan to travel through and whether you’re paying for a full-price or reduced ticket.

If you plan to travel through one or two zones, full-price tickets cost as little as 3,20 francs and 3,90 francs respectively. For anyone with a Half-Fare card (Halbtax/Demi-tarif), a ticket costs 2,40 francs.

When it came to the least affordable network, based not just on the price of a single ticket, but on how journey price compares to the average daily wage, the Rio de Janeiro metro system was the most expensive. In Rio, a single ticket swallows up an average of 6,85 percent of an employee's daily wage. That’s a lot of money if you’re travelling to and from work every day.

Which cities have the cheapest public transport & metro tickets?

Caracas, where a ticket costs 0,02 euros, was named as the city with the cheapest metro ticket. The Venezuelan capital also has the cheapest ticket when compared to average wages, with a metro ticket costing just 0,17 percent of the average daily wage.

Metro systems in Doha, Mexico City, Almaty and Seoul rounded out the top five cheapest in the world for a single ticket compared to average daily wages.

According to Remitly, the cities with the most affordable annual transport tickets are Prague (155 euros), Kuala Lumpur (132 euros) and Sofia (189 euros). In the capital of Czechia, residents need to pay an average of 7,3 percent of their monthly wage for an annual ticket, 9,9 percent in Kuala Lumpur and 12,1 percent in Sofia.

Parts of this article originally featured on IamExpat Germany.