It will be harder to get to university in Zurich this summer as the funicular railway linking the city centre to the heights of academia will be closed for a major overhaul.
The UBS Polybahn funicular railway will shut for major repair work between May 30 and September. The Zurich landmark (pictured below in a visualization after the refurbishing) runs from near the main station to the ETH – a world renowned science and technology university – and the neighboring University of Zurich.
Built in 1886, the railway belongs to UBS which rescued it financially in 1976 and had it totally refurbished it in 1996. The touch-up of the Polybahn, which carries 2 million passengers a year, will cost 3.8 million Swiss francs ($4.2 million).
UBS has had much better luck with its public-transport venture than the Zurich Cantonal Bank (ZKB) whose plans to build a cable car across Lake Zurich for its 150th anniversary in 2020 is still bogged down in the courts.
