PostAuto Switzerland, PostBus Ltd. (known as PostAuto Schweiz in Swiss Standard German (PostAuto AG), CarPostal Suisse in Swiss French (CarPostal S.A.), AutoPostale Svizzera in Swiss Italian (AutoPostale S.A.), and AutoDaPosta Svizra in Romansh (AutoDaPosta S.A.) is a subsidiary company of the Swiss Post, which provides regional and rural bus services throughout Switzerland, and also in France, Germany, and Liechtenstein.
The Swiss PostAuto service evolved as a motorized successor to the stagecoaches that previously carried passengers and mail in Switzerland, with the Swiss postal service providing postbus services carrying both passengers and mail. Although this combination had been self-evident in the past, the needs of each diverged towards the end of the twentieth century, when the conveyance of parcels was progressively separated from public transportation. This split became official with the conversion of PostAuto into a separate subsidiary of the Swiss Post in February 2005.
The buses operated by PostAuto are a Swiss icon, with a distinctive yellow livery and three-tone horn. The company uses an image of a posthorn as a logo on its buses and elsewhere. On some mountain roads, indicated by a traffic sign of a yellow posthorn on a blue background, the public transport, in particular the postal buses, have priority over other traffic and traffic users must follow instructions by public transport drivers.
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Services are provided by PostAuto Switzerland, a subsidiary company of Swiss Post with its headquarters in Bern. The company is responsible for 869 bus routes with 2,193 buses in Switzerland, transporting over 140 million passengers annually on its 11,869 km (7,375 mi) long network. The routes are either operated directly by PostAuto itself, or by local bus companies under contract.
PostAuto offers extensive services in public, public-private, and private transit, including:
CarPostale France, a subsidiary of PostBus Switzerland, operated bus services in France. The company was headquartered in Lyon, with operations from Haguenau, in Alsace, to Béziers, in Languedoc-Roussillon.[1] In September 2019 the business was sold to Keolis.[2][3]
PostBus Switzerland also operates the bus service for Liechtenstein.[4]
The German villages of Büsingen am Hochrhein (an exclave of Germany entirely surrounded by Swiss territory) and Randegg are also served via a connection with the Swiss towns of Schaffhausen and Ramsen.[5] The German town Singen benefits from a connection to Switzerland via a PostBus service to and from Ramsen.
During most of the 20th century, PostAuto coaches were made in Switzerland by either Saurer, Berna, or FBW.
In June 2018, members of the Executive Board of PostAuto were dismissed by Swiss Post after PostAuto manipulated its accounting records concealing profits in order to collect excess subsidies.[6][7]
