Driving to Laax and Flims: where the Swiss vignette stops
Do you need a Swiss vignette to drive to Laax and Flims?
Yes, for the motorway. Flims Laax sends drivers along the A13 to the Reichenau exit, number 18, and the A13 is green-signed national road. From Reichenau, main road 19 climbs through the Flims bypass to Flims, Laax and Falera, and a main road with blue signs carries no charge. Switzerland sells the vignette in one length only, the annual, so the motorway half of the drive costs the same as a whole season of it.
The charge ends at the Reichenau exit
Flims Laax gives one motorway instruction: the A13 to the Reichenau exit, number 18, then a drive of about twenty minutes. From Zurich or Basel the A3 feeds the A13 before Chur, and every part of that is first class national road, which is what the charge attaches to.
At Reichenau the route leaves the motorway for main road 19, the road that runs up the Surselva to Disentis and, in summer, over the Oberalp. It has bypassed Trin through a tunnel since 1994 and Flims since 2007, and neither bypass makes it a motorway: it stays an ordinary main road and outside the charge.
So the last stretch, the one with the hairpins and the snow, is the part that costs nothing. The vignette is for the motorway that gets you to Reichenau.
One annual vignette, and the cheaper counter at the border
Switzerland has no day, week or month vignette. The annual Swiss vignette is the whole catalogue, and one bought for a January week in Laax still covers a second trip the following December, because each year's vignette runs from 1 December to 31 January fourteen months later.
BAZG sells it as an e-vignette on its own webshop at the official price, and a staffed customs post at a motorway border crossing sells the sticker across the counter. We are an independent service and add a service fee to the official amount, itemised before you pay; if you are crossing at a staffed post anyway, the counter there costs you less than we do.
Decide before the border which of the three you want, so the choice is not made for you in a queue.
From Lindau, the Austrian stretch can cost nothing
A driver coming from Lindau and Bregenz uses Austria's A14 before reaching the Swiss Rhine valley. ASFINAG exempts the A14 from the Hörbranz border as far as the Hohenems junction, so leaving it at Hohenems and crossing the Rhine into Switzerland owes Austria nothing.
Stay on the A14 past Hohenems, towards Feldkirch and Liechtenstein, and you are on charged Austrian network, which needs an Austrian vignette as well as the Swiss one. Which crossing your satnav chooses decides whether you buy one vignette or two.
Main road 19 is shut to the west all winter
West of Disentis the same main road 19 climbs over the Oberalp Pass to Andermatt, and the canton of Uri closes it for the winter along with its other four passes. A driver combining Laax with a stay in Andermatt in the ski season does not drive between them over the top.
Arrive and leave by Reichenau, and treat any satnav route over the Oberalp between November and spring as a closed road.
The Murschetg garage has a height limit on every level
LAAX runs a parking garage at the Laax Murschetg valley station, and every level has its own clearance: 2.0 m on P3 to P5, 2.1 m and 2.5 m on the two halves of P1, 2.3 m on P6 to P8. Vehicles taller than 2 m can use the special spaces on P2, with up to 4 m of clearance, which cannot be reserved and are not guaranteed.
In winter a space in the garage can be reserved in advance as Inside Parking and opened with a personal QR code. Flims has its own garage in the Stenna centre. With a roof box, check the height before you drive down the ramp, not at the barrier.