What a real shortlist looks like
A realistic shortlist is almost never "all suburbs around one city." It usually comes down to three or four places with distinctly different everyday profiles.
Take a look at 1260 Nyon. It gives you a large Lake Geneva commuter town with 23,616 residents and a single-person tax rate of 11.0%. 4600 Olten gives you a highly connected central rail hub with 19,047 residents and 10.5%. 3052 Zollikofen offers a Bern-fringe base with 12,287 residents and 11.3%. That is a usable shortlist because each place implies a completely different daily routine.
Good public transport on paper simply isn't enough. A credible shortlist has to survive the morning rush, the evening return, and the inevitable delays that happen in real life. A suburban postcode can look perfect in a brochure and still be a terrible fit once you properly measure the route.
S-Bahn-Netze Schweiz.png.The S-Bahn map helps because it shows how the network hangs together. But it absolutely does not tell you whether the walk from your front door to the platform is short enough.
What belongs on the list
The places that belong on your shortlist are the ones that fit a strict time budget and have enough local scale to support your routine. The nearbyPlz field helps you see whether a postcode sits inside a real, integrated commuter ring. Population and household counts help you distinguish a mature commuter town from a tiny settlement that just happens to have a train station.
Bahnhof Zollikon Gleis.JPG.A station can look incredibly convenient on a map and still be a poor fit if the transfer is awkward, the frequency drops off early, or the final walk is unpleasant. This is exactly why your shortlist should stay short: if you can't mentally picture the real trip just from looking at the page, you should probably drop the option.
Karte der Verkehrsverbünde und Tarifverbünde in der Schweiz.png.Tariff zones change the picture faster than most people expect. If you are commuting every single day, the zone boundaries, transfer points, and exact timetable fit matter infinitely more than a nice-looking dot on a map.
How to keep it short
The cleanest rule is to brutally cut any postcode that fails one of three basic tests: the route looks messy, the tax savings are too small to justify the extra distance, or the place is just too small to support your daily needs. What survives should feel like a real alternative, not just a map pin near some train tracks.
That is where a data shortlist ends. After that, you need the actual timetable, the fare zone map, and the exact street address to take over.
