31.7% cross-border commuters travel >1.5 hrs daily

Context

TL;DR

• 31.7% exceed one and a half hours per day
• 73.2% use a private car
• 28.3% spend more than 10% of salary
• 37.4% have remote work

Key facts

• Search → "Working across borders"
• Creation of → BiblioLavoro, CISL Lombardy study centre
• Sample → 1,542 border workers; online questionnaire in May 2026
• Presentation → on Saturday 24 October at Ville Ponti, Varese
• Teleworking tax threshold → 25%

The online questionnaire, which in May 2026 was answered by 1,542 border workers, most of whom are members of the OCST, finds that 31.7% spend more than an hour and a half a day on the journey between home and work. The investigation was presented on Saturday 24 October at Ville Ponti, in Varese.

The survey "Working beyond the border" was conducted by BiblioLavoro, a CISL Lombardy study centre, for CISL dei Laghi, CISL Sondrio, CISL Piemonte Orientale and the Ticino Ocst trade union. The costs of work in Ticino that do not appear in the paycheck also include travel: the time spent on the road and the money needed to travel it.

The daily time dedicated to the journey

In the daily round trip, only 12.5% of respondents stay under 30 minutes; 30% are between 30 and 60 minutes and 25.8% between 60 and 90. For 31.7%, on the other hand, the journey exceeds one and a half hours: 14.6% takes from 91 to 120 minutes, 17.1% more than two hours and 3.2% more than three hours.

The weekly frequency makes the figure even more concrete. 66.1% of border crossers make this trip five days a week; another 27.2% make it four days. Combining duration and frequency allows you to read the results on two scales: the time declared on a round trip and the days of the week on which the journey is repeated. The research keeps the bands separate and does not offer a single average time; therefore 12.5% under half anhour and 31.7% over an hour and a half remain two distinct groups, not extremes of a calculated average.

Marco Contessa, national head of Frontiers of the CISL, observed that economic motivation continues to attract workers, while daily commuting and the heavy costs of mobility feed a real "time trap".

Operational details

The data on travel time translates into a choice of mobility and a portion of the monthly salary allocated to travel. The research separates the two levels: first it measures the main means of transport, then the salary range absorbed by the trip. The comparison is useful precisely because it does not automatically attribute a single expense to each vehicle.

Car-centric commuting

The private car is the main means of transport for 73.2% of those interviewed, a significantly higher share than the train, which stands at 10.5%. Motorcycles and scooters reach 6%, while 3.8% combine multiple vehicles. The company car is indicated by 3.4%, car pooling by 2.6% and the bus by 0.5%.

The authors of the research also attribute this distribution to the limits of the cross-border public transport offer; the use of cars exposes workers to traffic and waiting at border crossings. The text does not indicate specific crossings or quantify expectations: the documented data concerns the composition of the vehicles used by cross-border workers.

Spending as a share of salary

Travel expenses affect the monthly salary between 5% and 10% for 47.7% of those interviewed; for 21.6% the share is between 10% and 20%, while 6.6% exceeds 20%. Overall, for 28.3% of those interviewed, travel absorbs more than 10% of the salary, i.e. more than a tenth of the salary.

The comparison between public and private methods concerns the same share of the salary: 32.2% of those who use public transport remain under 5%, compared to 19.7% of those who travel by private means. The difference is 12.5 percentage points, calculated as 32.2% minus 19.7%. The presentation keeps the two indicators distinct: 28.3% concerns the expenditure relating to the salary, while 73.2% concerns the used vehicle.

Key points

Research links work from home to business readiness, contribution regime, and tax threshold. Only 37.4% of respondents work in companies that allow border workers to work remotely; when this possibility is provided, in 92.5% of cases it remains limited to a share between 10% and 25% of the time.

95.2% of those who use work from home rate its impact on quality of life positively, while 94.3% would like to use it for more days. The reasons most often given are better work-life balance (42.5%), less time spent travelling (42.4%), less travel-related stress (34.7%) and lower transport costs (33.7%).

Two thresholds for the same work-from-home job

The constraint does not depend only on companies. The European agreement on cross-border teleworking, signed by Italy and Switzerland, allows a border worker to work from home up to 49.99% of the time without changing the contribution regime. On the fiscal side, however, the agreement between Italy and Switzerland sets the threshold at 25%.

According to the reconstruction proposed by the research, in the negotiation Switzerland was willing to reach 40%, as it had done with France; the Italian position, however, raised the tax threshold to 25%. The union proposes to reopen the additional protocol to align both thresholds at 49.99% or, at least, to raise the tax threshold to 40%. The difference between 49.99% and 25% therefore concerns the two thresholds cited by the source: the first for contributions, the second for tax.

Satisfaction and duration of the trip

The work-life balance leaves 44.2% of respondents with little or no satisfaction, a percentage that reaches 49.9% among those under 36. Satisfaction concerns 69.5% of those who also work from home and 51.8% of those who work exclusively in person. The questionnaire therefore finds a distance of 17.7 percentage points between the two groups; among those under 36, on the other hand, the proportion of those little or not at all satisfied is 5.7 points higher than the total.

The researchers' statistical analysis confirms a relationship: all other things being equal, job satisfaction decreases the longer the daily commute. The source adds neither a single average time nor an individual threshold.

The perimeter of the data

For the border crossing of the Canton of Ticino, the questionnaire described here does not measure G, AVS, LPP, LAMal, REFORNI, INPS, tax at source or double taxation: these issues are not quantified in the results reported. The fiscal reference of the search remains the threshold of teleworking.

To deepen the mobility side, the comparison can continue with the Ticino public transport.

Source: varesenews.it