Let's say you want to travel with two friends from Winterthur to Berne, and want to know the difference in CO₂ emissions between travelling by rail and by car. In the new online timetable, you can calculate your environmental impact for every trip at the touch of a button.

Simply by clicking on "Environment" in the detailed view of a connection, you can find out the specific environmental impact of your trip. The calculation is based on preset, average figures for vehicle occupancy levels. You can adjust these as required, so for a car, for example, you can specify the emission class, size and efficiency.

Journey distances are automatically multiplied by the environmental effects of one vehicle kilometre. These environmental effects have been compiled with the help of information on environmental impact: as well as direct energy consumption, the system also takes into account indirect effects from the construction, maintenance and disposal of vehicles and the routes on which they travel. The environmental effects are then divided among the number of people travelling, giving the individual environmental impact of each person.

Vehicle occupancy is an important factor when it comes to environmental impact: on average, a train with an average occupancy is around four times as energy-efficient and 20 times more environmentally friendly than a car with an average occupancy over the same route. One person in a relatively empty train still generates about five times fewer CO₂ emissions than five people in a five-seat car. However, if you compare the environmental efficiency of a passenger on a full train with that of a passenger in a car with average occupancy, the difference in CO₂ emissions per head increases to a factor of 100.

With the SBB Ecocalculator in the online timetable and EcoTransIT for freight travel, SBB is helping its customers to make decisions to ensure climate-friendly mobility – the choice is yours.