> we use practically 0 Swiss trains. They are super expensive
I guess you know that, but if you live in Switzerland you're supposed to have the discount card ("demi-tarif") which makes the train way more affordable. It's still not cheap, especially if you compare with a car trip not taking the price of the car and maintenance into account (which is reasonable if you need the car for other reasons anyway). But in my case at least, without kids, it's really worth being able to use my time to do something productive rather than driving.
Also curious about the Chamonix example: I've never lived in Geneva, but aren't there a ton of other options in Switzerland that are way more connected than the French side? Why choose this example over Swiss resorts?
Any mountain in Switzerland is minimum +1 hour compared to France, when looking for comparable awesomeness as that Chamonix for example, that would mean Zermatt, 3.5h. Or Grindelwald, 2.5h. Why do that to yourself for weekends?
Besides there are pretty places much closer in France. France is also much cheaper, food better. Not that many reasons to chose otherwise for short weekend trips.
Car is unfortunately a must for family of us, any alternative is world of pain and limitation, even ignoring the prices of trains (just like any other family we know). You need so much equipment for whole family and small kids especially, that using trains means we wouldn't be traveling at all. People we know that don't own the car rent it out every weekend they need and waste tons of time and energy on chasing lower prices. Even with demi-tarif/halb-tax (which makes you waste 200 CHF/USD per head per year for no services), the prices of Swiss trains are properly bad. It still is marginally cheaper to take one's own car even if driving alone, and often much faster.
Frequent experience from times before when I was using Swiss trains for commute/traveling around - you end up standing for quite long amount of time during normal times, many people travel everywhere. Not nice if you are ie tired after long hike/skitour. With small kids, just a horrible experience.
All this ignoring current covid crisis and the fact that in trains here you are stuck in long narrow tube with 100 other people, few coughing, few sneezing, few not wearing masks on nose, or at all because they hold that can of beer for 2 hours to have an excuse, kids not wearing anything at all etc.
Also if you do commute to work every day by train, it probably makes sense to buy a GA (a yearly ticket that gives you unlimited travel on all swiss public transport for that year) for 3800chf. Almost anyone I know commuting some distance does this.
Of course if you work in Geneva that's a different matter. There aren't any trains in Geneva as it just isn't big enough, but unireso's tram network is widely used.
This is particularly timely because right now there's a hole in the line between Lausanne and Geneva. Consequently you can't currently take a train either way and have to use a replacement bus. The autoroute is seeing stupid levels of traffic right now as a result as all the people who usually take the train get in cars instead.
Chamonix is almost certainly slower by train unless there are traffic issues. This is also likely true of the Swiss resorts too because personal motorised transport avoids the inconveniences of waiting and changing that trains inevitably have. But the article is about eliminating short haul flights in Europe, not this.
Chamonix is just an outlier in many ways though. Overly touristic but fantastic off piste and mountaineering. Rail networks always have some poor journeys and this is definitely one of them, in student days I remember once having to bivi by one of the stations and wait for tomorrow's train
I guess you know that, but if you live in Switzerland you're supposed to have the discount card ("demi-tarif") which makes the train way more affordable. It's still not cheap, especially if you compare with a car trip not taking the price of the car and maintenance into account (which is reasonable if you need the car for other reasons anyway). But in my case at least, without kids, it's really worth being able to use my time to do something productive rather than driving.
Also curious about the Chamonix example: I've never lived in Geneva, but aren't there a ton of other options in Switzerland that are way more connected than the French side? Why choose this example over Swiss resorts?