The integrated timetable of Switzerland | Hacker News Reader

The integrated timetable of Switzerland

jokteur.com

229 pointsjokteur158 comments

What isn’t explained in the article is how this was made possible. While carefully adjusting departure times is certainly part of it, there were also a range of construction projects that shaved minutes off the travel times between major hubs to bring them just below multiples of 30 minutes (and 15 minutes in some cases). This makes it much easier to coordinate arrivals and departures and minimize transfer times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_2000

Author here: great suggestion, I will add this at the end of the article for supplementary readings

I hope that every infrastructure project tries to make a measure of the total economic gain of said project.

Getting people around quicker is part of that (many models use a cost-per-hour for citizen time on the train). More efficient connections are part of travel time, and a simulation of a large number of potential journeys on some proposed infrastructure would show that.

That means that when government is considering how to allocate $X of budget, they should naturally end up choosing projects that help align the schedules, even if nobody explicitly tried to do such an alignment, simply by choosing the projects that are best value for money.

They do this for transit projects in Toronto. They calculate the total infrastructure + operational cost of the project over 60 years then compare it with the estimated economical benefits of having this project.

They still ended up approving many negative projects, even while there were other cheaper/better located transit projects with more benefits. The political cost of cancelling those projects was higher (ex: Mayor has campaigned on getting it approved and there was no way he would get back on that)

It's still interesting to see it and calculate it, as a matter of transparency, but its still not a guarantee of success.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/costs-for-scarborough-subway-and-...

When you do this kind of estimates, in particular when the time scale is many decades, the outcome depends on way to many assumptions and other projections to even a little reliable. I still think it is useful exercises, but it is certainly legitimate to use it as only one of many variables in the decision making process.

I spent a large amount of time years ago reading the LOSSAN reports [95] and it would have been interesting to see things noted as "for certain will help" and "most likely will help" etc. Many of the improvements were things like "double track this single-track section between two double-tracked ones" which would almost certainly help; others were things like bridge replacements which wouldn't necessarily help but would prevent maintenance issues in the future, to things like station improvements which would only really help travel times if travel volumes got above a certain amount.

For example, this project: https://www.octa.net/LOSSAN-Rail-Corridor-Agency/Central-Coa... doesn't really change average transit times, but would allow two or three trains to "start" each day at the farthest north.

Of course US passenger rail is in such a state that there's almost always very obvious low-hanging fruit.

[95]: https://www.octa.net/LOSSAN-Rail-Corridor-Agency/Overview/

> They do this for transit projects in Toronto.

They may do this, but whether the number they derive has any kind of meaning or value is another thing altogether.

> I hope that every infrastructure project tries to make a measure of the total economic gain of said project.

This is basically impossible to do short of shutting the system down for year to measure the loss (unthinkable).

And even then, you'd have a measurement that doesn't mean anything because it couldn't measure the opportunity costs of the path not taken when the chocie was made initially.

As a matter of fact, I'll go one step further: I don't even think the question makes sense.

Economies are chaotic systems, and even if it is sometimes rather clear after the fact that a specific choice leads to overall positive outcomes (such as choosing to implement a high-quality public transportation system in Switzerland), actually measuring the "gain" is basically impossible. Worse: it's an ill-defined question.

this is already done; this is what modelling and simulation is for. at least in the US pretty much all projects require some kind of alternatives analysis, and at least one of those alternatives must be "do nothing at all."

whether the model's assumptions are correct, and whether politicians actually allocate funds based on projected efficacy, are another matter entirely.

No doubt Swiss train network is excellent.

If we are to trust to published statistics form other countries for 2018, and using for the Swiss system, the 2021 data mentioned in the article: "about 92% of passenger trains were on-time" this would make it for punctuality, somewhat middle of the league. Behind Poland, Greece and Bulgaria for example.

This is assuming being on time is: "a delay of five minutes or less". For Swiss network the article uses the definition: "a delay of three minutes or less".

"Share of regional and local passenger rail services classified as punctual in Europe in 2018, by country": https://www.statista.com/statistics/1255048/punctuality-regi...

The point is that Switzerland maintains this level of punctuality in addition to connecting the entire country, down to the village. That "down to the village" bit is the part that very few other public transport systems in the world have managed to get right, including those alternatives in your list.

Of course, as you say this is about trusting the published statistics from the country itself. In the case of Switzerland, I can say from anecdotal experience that 92% is probably very close to the truth, if that helps?

I think GP's point was also that the Swiss look middle-of-the-league only when comparing their strict definition (>3m is counted as a delay) with the looser definition used by other countries (>5m is counted as a delay). Presumably, if trains with a 4- or 5-minute delay were not counted as delayed, more than 92% of Swiss trains would be on time.

Fun fact, if a train is cancelled in Belgium, it doesn't count in the delayed statistics :)

It's thus probably also worth counting the number of trips - I don't have numbers, but I have a feeling that SBB runs much more passenger trains daily than Polish or other systems do.

The trains run more often and go to more places than any other place I've ever been to.

Because they way Switzerland is structured both in terms of administration and geography I don't think that a village in Switzerland is equivalent to a village in most other countries. Presumably the canton system results in more smaller cities and large villages, and the terrain means they are in a limited number of places. The largest cities are all within 100 km of each other. While a single trip in a large country can be longer than the entire length of Switzerland. It will of course be easier to match a timetable with short predictable distances at lower speeds.

200km/h is "lower speeds"? That's the nominal speed of IC trains between Swiss population centers.

And Switzerland is quite a tiny country, so more than 200kph isn't worth it. Regular rail connected by wire will require much more maintenance going faster.

I think there are pros and cons to both structures. Villages in Switzerland are well separated by geography that is physically difficult to overcome (i.e. mountains), even if the distances are not big. It's way easier to lay down a flat, long rail between 2 cities in, say, the US or Mexico than it is to do the same in Switzerland.

The structure would probably need to change for larger countries though, it's true. But you could keep a lot of it; create long distance rails between major cities with stops along these rails for smaller towns to feed into. Some European countries have this type of structure, Italy for example, though it does get very tricky for the very smallest villages

The really smaller villages in the mountains are only connected by postal bus. The villages in the valley and what I could call small towns are connected by train, but it is far from ubiquitous.

True, the density gets much lower in the villages and especially those in the mountains. But for the average person in _most_ of the Swiss villages there is some connection they can take to get to where they need to go (though it may not always be the fastest, depending on where you live)

> The largest cities are all within 100 km of each other.

They're not.

Zurich is 225km from Lausanne and 125km from Bern. Geneva is 254km from Basel, 371km from Lugano, 265km from Lucerne and 277km from Zurich.

I think the opposite of your claim is closer to the truth (though it also has exceptions) than your claim.

As an American living in a suburban Swiss village taking the bus into Geneva, I don’t think the bus was more than 1 minute late once every hundred days. And I was pretty far along on the line. It was staggeringly punctual.

Hopefully European countries aren't prone to manipulating the statistics. An example that used to happen in my (Australian) city: if a train was running late, they'd skip stations: magically, it now arrived at its destination on time!

Was on a Swiss train that did exactly this yesterday. To be fair, the delay originated in Italy (20 minutes late)and there was a minimal impact for people wanting to get to or leave from that city (Bern) as passenger on the affected train could get off one stop early and then catch another train to finish their leg and passengers trying to board the train in Bern just had to catch another train to the subsequent stop (Olten) to get on the late train there.

Finally, this was the first time in over 20 years of light rail use in Switzerland that I experienced this.

> Was on a Swiss train that did exactly this yesterday.

Though there's usually replacement trains for those use cases. The main stations have a standby train (Dispozug) ready to immediately replace any train that's cancelled or delayed (and avoid propagating delays).

https://twitter.com/SBBTrainDriver/status/150809526141493657... (is an example, the driver spends 3h+ just waiting in the train in case it needs to replace another train)

In my European country if a train was running very late they could turn around the train some stops earlier, thereby not servicing the stations further down the track. Since the train would never arrive there it implied it also couldn't be late and thus it would not be counted in the statistics as such.

The rail company has a government-imposed punctuality target and their result is used in the calculation of how much money they get from the government the next year, i.e. the usual "once a KPI becomes a target..."

German Rail did that: translated presentation from German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGCmPLWZKd8 (with a translator that sadly breathes into the mic...)

German rail has what we call the Profalla-Wende (a "turn" named after the former minister of transport). If a train is sufficiently delayed, and at the final destination would turn around to do the same trip in the other direction, it might skip the last few stops and just turn around earlier. Now the train is on time, skipped stops aren't counted in the statistic, the ripple effects from tracks and stations blocked by the delayed train are gone, and everyone who wanted to go to the final destination is skrewed.

I don't know about the statistics reported to the European level but most Dutch railways don't take into account "cancelled" trains when determining punctuality. A train is "cancelled" when it's 30 minutes late and therefore doesn't alter the punctuality scores.

It does stop at all stops unless it's really late and passengers might as well get out at a stopover station and transfer trains, however if it's sufficiently delayed it may be put on side tracks to let other trains pass to prevent a ripple effect, delaying the train even more to keep the rest of the system working well.

Currently on the phone so can’t add many sources, but I think you can’t really compare the punctually of trains across european countries like this. E.g if I remember correctly in Germany, a train is late after 5 minutes 59 seconds, whereas Switzerlands threshold is 2:59. Also Switzerland measures delays at arrival at destination, not departure from origin. I don’t really know about other countries thought.

https://company.sbb.ch/de/ueber-die-sbb/verantwortung/die-sb...

Man it costs a lot of money to maintain this, but Switzerland will continue to invest heavily into rail service, backed by the public: https://www.bav.admin.ch/bav/en/home/modes-of-transport/rail...

One project I find pretty cool is the 4 track expansion via tunnel under and through an existing village: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi2rmEl8ULA

> Man it costs a lot of money to maintain this, but Switzerland will continue to invest heavily into rail service, backed by the public: https://www.bav.admin.ch/bav/en/home/modes-of-transport/rail...

Isn’t it paid for through ticket fees? Or is it subsidized by the state?

Usually the ticket fee are very, very small part of it. The heavy weight is public founding, taxes.

I gladly play my tax here in Swiz because the system works. There are "big" delays ever here, yesterday something like 30 minutes, but is like 1 time out of 100.

> Or is it subsidized by the state?

"subsidized", yes, but like any other investment the idea is that it will create positive economic value across the whole country and across a long time horizon, in a way that the tickets cannot recapture (for example, every person on the train is one less person on the road -- less cars is a benefit for the other drivers and reduces road wear/maintenance cost and reduces accidents/health-care costs).

Thus perfect for a government project. Create vast value and the recapture mechanism is taxes.

Luxembourg went to totally free public transportation. Bus, train, light rail. Total game-changer. More countries should do this.

> Luxembourg went to totally free public transportation. Bus, train, light rail. Total game-changer. More countries should do this.

It's a "country" with 630K relatively wealthy, educated, trustworthy people. You can do a lot of things if your "country" meets that criteria.

Few do.

> Isn’t it paid for through ticket fees? Or is it subsidized by the state?

You can subsidize public transit/rail or you can subsidize highways. Which has a better 'ROI' when high oil prices come along? :)

The Swiss rail company, SBB, is owned by the state. In 2021 it made a loss of 325 million CHF, which is about 3.3% of its total turnover. So it's paid mostly through ticket fees and for a small part by the state.

I think that's incorrect, public funding is included in revenues. In 2021, out of ~10B revenues, 4B came from state aid. In terms of operating income, traffic revenues are roughly equal to public sector funding.

See https://reporting.sbb.ch/en/finance?highlighted=8e222679f50e...

Quoting coronavirus pandemic numbers in a country where people are ordered to stay at home is a pretty dishonest argument.

SBB made profit it 2019 for example.

Define "loss" here. As far as I can tell, the Swiss franc is a sovereign fiat currency which lost any association to a gold standard by means of public referendum. The "cost" is effectively zero as it is part of the general economy available to the nation-state of Switzerland, and fits into the larger monetary and fiscal policy of the country.

I have never considered the "cost" of a government service to be representative of anything unless an analysis of social benefits is likewise included. For instance the entire discourse around the USPS during the last US presidential election.

Clearly, the train system is net-profitable for the country or they would shut it down, so calling it a "loss" seems inaccurate.

You're looking for the Farebox recovery ratio [0].

Japan and honk kong: Mostly yes.

Europe: Mostly no but at least a good portion of it is for most.

US: Not even close.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

Except Amtrak, which on that page is listed at 95%.

Why are the US regional transit ratios so low? They're taking in real money, yet the costs are 4-5x the revenue.

Theres a couple things wrong with regional transit in the US

* it's rarely the fastest way to get to your destination, wherever it may be, so doesn't attract passengers

* to build on the above points, the suburbanization of jobs in recent decades has reduced the ability of transit to compete, since transit mostly performs best heading quickly into congested city centers; suburbs are also diffuse, which make them hard to serve with frequent transit

* labor productivity in US transit is really low. as a general example, in the US most commuter rail systems still check individual tickets on every journey, which is very labor intensive. EU systems tend to use proof-of-payment, which basically means most of the time you're on the honor system, but if a roving inspector catches you without a ticket you'll get charged a punitive fine worth several months of fares. transit unions are probably one of the few US unions with teeth left, and they fight anything perceived as cutting jobs.

* US systems charge flat rates as a kind of social policy for the poor, which is good for them but bad for the balance sheet

one thing to note is that pretty much all the North American agencies on the list, unlike most of the Asian and European ones also on the list, integrate bus operations, and bus operations pretty much never make money due to the lower passengers per driver and high fuel costs.

That number is wrong. For 2021 Amtrak received 4.7 billion in Federal money while their revenue was 2.1 billion.

Swiss here. Amazing system, using it everyday. Brutally expensive tickets tho.

expensive in absolute or relative terms? is it expensive e.g. compared to a car?

I would say, if you take single tickets (even with the half-fare card), the tickets are quite more expensive than the trip with a normal car (counting costs of car, of gas, insurrance, ...).

However, if you have a monthly fare because you go somewhere regularly, it is still expensive, but much more managable.

The monthly General Abo (unlimited travel for all public transports in Switzerland) is ~340$/month. A parking spot in a city could already be from 80$ to 200$ a month.

I'd like to add that the fact that single tickets are [sometimes too] expensive in some cases is due to the approach of billing by geographic zones, which has its own up- and downsides.

For example: If I want to go from somewhere around Lake Zurich to Zurich, I have to pay to "travel in every geographical zone" between me and Zurich. However, this also allows me to travel freely in these zones.

In addition to that, if you pay for a return trip (which most people usually do), you automatically pay for travelling freely in these zones in any direction for a full 24 hours.

So assuming a half-fare card, I pay CHF 3.20 to take the bus 500m and back, which is ridiculously expensive for that distance, however, I "only" pay CHF 12.90 for riding all forms of PT (train, bus, ship, etc.) between me and Zurich, including the whole city for a full day, which is relatively reasonable for Zurich standards.

That is way cheaper than I would have guessed. A yearly subscription for public transport in Berlin alone costs at least twice that.

S/he wrote 340 a month, not a year

City tickets in Switzerland also are around 300-500/year. (sure our cities are nowhere near Berlin in size) the 340/m option does allow you to use nearly any transport (boats, trains, buses, some cable cars) in the whole country including price reductions (up to 50%) for most non-included transport methods (like private mountain trains or tourist hot spot cable cars).

> City tickets in Switzerland also are around 300-500/year

Zurich zone 110 (city center) is 782chf/year ($816) for the non-transferable one. Bern is 790chf/year. I'm not sure where you're getting "300-500/year".

https://www.zvv.ch/zvv/de/abos-und-tickets/abos/netzpass.htm... https://www.mylibero.ch/de/libero-abo/jahresabo

That's absolutely new to me. Last time I got a Libero it was like 380 or so for 2 zones.

Thanks for the correction

> I would say, if you take single tickets (even with the half-fare card), the tickets are quite more expensive than the trip with a normal car (counting costs of car, of gas, insurrance, ...).

Which numbers are you using for this calculation?

I assume you have some price-per-kilometer traveled by car (all expenses included) and by train?

Swiss here, it always depends. Some rides are cheaper by car but take less time by train and you have WiFi and fresh coffee in trains so it's only partially travel time partially leisure or work time.

Some routes are more expensive, but again way more comfortable than a car.

The there are dozens of hacks to save. Early booking, last minute bookings, half fair (which is only $200 or so a year and makes you pay half for everything including boats and some mountain trains), $50 24h all inclusive tickets, ...

IMO if you assume our median income to be 3 times that of Austria (or Germany, Italy for that matter). And our tickets on average cost only 1.5-2x as much while we actually have one of the best networks you can think of I would say it's not expensive at all.

My all in leasing car is $500 + petrol. For 2 people getting 2 all inklusive Tickets would still be cheaper.

Half fare card is CHF 185 for the first year or CHF 165 for every subsequent year (CHF 120 / CHF 100 if you're 16-26).

For anyone planning to spend any amount of time in Switzerland and using PT, it is well worth considering. It does exactly what it says, you only pay half.

So assuming you travel from Zurich to Bern (CHF 51 -> CHF 26, you safe CHF 25), it's worth it after only 8 trips.

Everyone seems to have a half price card except tourists. I think this is designed to get subsidize tourists less, because otherwise Swiss rail and metro prices appear twice as much as other European countries.

Tourists have access to tourist-only specials though, which make up for that, I think: https://www.sbb.ch/en/leisure-holidays/inspiration/internati...

You need to do a lot of train travel to amortize those costs. If you just need to take the train from Geneva airport to Lausanne and then maybe the metro a couple of times, it won't be worth it.

That's not a bad trade-off to be fair. In the UK tickets (at least inter-city) are also brutally expensive but the system is, to put it kindly, often flakey.

I had a delay repay for the first time in years a few weeks ago - someone threw themselves under a train at Milton Keynes just before my train was due to leave Euston.

I don’t consider £25 each way Manchester-London to be brutally expensive to be honest - http://brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=MAN&dest=EUS&rte=371&tkt...

Shows as £46.70, which still isn't bad, though off-peak is often less painful. If you have to use the train to commute to work, then things start raking up.

I live 15 miles outside London and 17 years ago was paying best part of £2k a year just to get into central london and back, today it would be the best part of £3k a year to make that same journey. Using the same tracks, (probably trains) and stations all those years ago. Though more people than back then, which was already at levels upon peak work commutes that saw you playing sardines.

That almost gets you one year of travel in 2nd class throughout the entire Swiss train network (including public transport in cities).

Switzerland has a population of less than london. £3k would get you transport throughout london too - rail and bus.

Nobody should be commuting from Manchester to London. That's £46.70 return, so £23.35 each way, arriving in London about 1030.

Peak time london commuting is the most expensive part of the network to deliver, as it requires increased amount of capital that's mostly idle, yet peak time commuters get massive discounts compared with occasional use. Compare Reading to London. A season ticket works out to be about £22 return for 5 days a week, a normal peak time ticket is £52.10.

> I don’t consider £25 each way Manchester-London to be brutally expensive to be honest

I think you're citing pretty much a best case there. I just put in the same journey on a morning next week and got £150 each way, which I suspect is still not the worst case.

Before the pandemic, my wife used to pay about £5K/year for a London - Brighton season ticket (a distance of about 50 miles).

Possibly the most infuriating thing is that it's highly unpredictable what's cheap and what's expensive, and long journeys can often be several times the cost of flying. From a social-welfare/cost-of-carbon and oil-crisis perspective, this is nuts, especially when you compare what Germany is doing[1].

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-slashes-summer-train-fa...

£25 each way is a walk up fare, you just need to take the slightly slower train (which is still faster than the car and about the same speed it was in the 90s), arriving in London about 1030.

Peak time commuting tickets are likewise a bargain. Brighton-London for £5,300 5 times a day 50 weeks a year at 65 miles each way is 32,500 miles, or 16p per mile. For a car doing 45mpg that will cost you £6,300 in fuel alone, let alone parking, depreciation, wear and tear, etc.

The car will carry 4 people and luggage. So if you consider car pooling, or you need to be in office 3 times a week, it's not a good deal. Or your car is electric. Even for a couple, a car makes economic sence.

Also consider comfort - have you see how crowded those trains get, sometimes you might have to stand for hours on a long distance train. If you are able bodied man thats one thing, but if you are pregnant or injured, that's tought.

They are not suppose to be close.

Sure, you could spend 3-4 hours driving from Brighton to central London and paying £65 to do it.

It doesn't come close with season tickets, hence the reason so many people chose to commute by train rather than driving. Also why people take the train rather than commuter bus services which tend to be cheaper

As someone who has lived long-term in both countries, I think that while the Swiss system is absolutely better than the UK system, people in the UK are a bit _too_ self-deprecating about the UK rail system, which is, all things considered, relatively good. Honestly, the biggest pain point in my eyes is that, because of privatisation, it's not all integrated into a single booking/refund/information system, which unfortunately does it make it _feel_ quite flakey.

> which is, all things considered, relatively good

It really depends on the line and the company. Virgin from London to Manchester is a reasonably good experience. Anything Northern (as a for example) makes me fume when I even think of taking any of their trains.

Also, prices for spontaneous bookings are outrageous. Even compared to Switzerland.

It will be as of next year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Railways.

How did I miss this? Thank you for linking it, I'm very curious how things will turn out!

> Honestly, the biggest pain point in my eyes is that, because of privatisation, it's not all integrated into a single booking/refund/information system, which unfortunately does it make it _feel_ quite flakey.

Despite some shortcomings in that area, at least in the UK they did keep a common ticketing system with through-ticketing (and integral passenger rights for the whole of your journey) between operators even through the whole of the privatisation saga. In Germany they've mostly ignored that topic and we're mostly only saved by the fact most long distance trains are still operated by DB, and for international journeys it's equally bad, with often no through-tickets available.

I have to admit I don't fully understand the issue you're talking about, but I'd like to find out more. Could you give an example? I've booked trains entirely via DB from Basel Bad Bf to Copenhagen, for example, but perhaps you mean something else?

I think they mean if you wanted to book a multi-leg trip of which only one leg is DB operated, it's a mess to coordinate and buy for different operators.

(I have no experience with this, but that's my interpretation of the comment.)

Some examples:

- Cologne – Bruxelles is served by both DB and Thalys. In principle both operators run in alternating hours and taken together you get an hourly service [1] between the two cities. Unfortunately for quite a few years now, Thalys has withdrawn its through-ticketing arrangements and so you can no longer buy through-tickets involving Thalys and a connection on the German side. If you buy the tickets separately, you've got no guarantees that your ticket will remain valid in case of a missed connection. (Thalys still participates in Railteam and HOTNAT, but that only applies to connection between high-speed long-distance trains, so if your connection involves some other kind of train, too bad).

- It also means (apart from the fact that Thalys requires mandatory reservations) they're semi-useless for domestic journeys (beyond Cologne, Thalys trains usually continue through to Dortmund), because in the case of delays or cancellations your ticket won't be valid on alternative DB services. If you're lucky they'll take you on a goodwill basis, otherwise you'd have to either wait for the next Thalys (only every two hours and with some larger gaps!) or pay for a DB ticket out of your own pocket and claim the money back afterwards.

- The services between Paris and Germany via the LGV Est are operated in cooperation between SNCF and DB, so luckily both operators will sell tickets for all services on that line, no matter whether they're TGV or ICE services. It's still not perfect however, because (at least online?) DB won't sell tickets involving a connection in France, while SNCF won't sell tickets involving a connection in Germany. So if you don't live in one of the larger cities directly served by the through trains (I live near that line in Germany, but technically I first still need to take a local train first for three stops or so) and need to go somewhere in France other than Strasbourg or Paris, you still can't get a through ticket.

- Through tickets to Italy are equally problematic. Maybe things are slightly better at a booking office, but at least online playing around with international-bahn.de it looks like the above, i.e. DB/ÖBB won't sell tickets involving connections in Italy and vice versa for FS.

- international-bahn.de is happy to sell you combined tickets, but its FAQs also say that those don't necessarily count as a through ticket and in the case of missed connections you might have to depend on the goodwill of the operators involved.

- For a few years now it seems that there is at least the so called Agreement on Journey Continuation (see https://www.seat61.com/european-train-travel.htm#AJC), which is at least a step in the right direction and is better than nothing, but that agreement is

a) still somewhat obscure, and

b) effectively still a somewhat more formalised goodwill arrangement, with the exact details and regulations not (!) being made public and remaining a secret among the participating railways

c) also doesn't cover all operators, e.g. Thalys doesn't participate, and neither do some of the large open access operators that exist in e.g. Italy, Austria, or the Czech Republic

And like I mentioned previously, in Germany technically the law asks all railways to work together in creating fares for through-ticketing (§12 AEG), but especially as far as long distance trains are concerned this obligation seems to have been mostly forgotten.

[1] Albeit with some gaps, especially on Thalys's side. I don't know whether those gaps are a recent, Covid-induced phenomenon, or have been present for a while longer.

Thank you for the detailed comment! I can say I've had good experiences on connections between Germany and Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, and Germany and the Netherlands, including regarding missed connections, but it sounds like the situation isn't so great when it comes to other countries/operators.

Another Swiss here.

Brutally expensive? Sure, when you look at full fare tickets. Since every Swiss, who uses public transport owns a half fare card those prices are (mostly) halfed, though.

When it comes to commuter travel prices become outright reasonable.

The best deal, if you use the train for a regular commute intercity is the Generalabonnement[0].

ca. $4000 (6500 for first class) for a year of unrestricted travel throughout the (almost) whole country on any train is actually a steal.

There are also special saver tickets, restricted to a specific train and usually booked well in advance, which can be outright cheap.

[0] https://www.sbb.ch/en/travelcards-and-tickets/railpasses/ga/...

German here, who traveled a lot through Switzerland.

I find it even more amazing that there are more people who have a Generalabonnement than a Bahncard 100 (the German equivalent which is a bit cheaper). [1]

Commuting between Fribourg and Zurich was always great, even when there were only circa five minutes to change trains in Bern. It's so efficient, I always catched my train in Bern.

[1] >2019: 500'000 Exemplare des GA sind seit dieser Woche im Umlauf. Dies entspricht im Vergleich zu vor 20 Jahren einer Verzwanzigfachung.

>Anzahl der Besitzer einer BahnCard 100 bis 2021. Die BahnCard 100 der Deutschen Bahn wurde lange Zeit immer beliebter, im Jahr 2021 gab es rund 36.000 Besitzer.

> I find it even more amazing that there are more people who have a Generalabonnement than a Bahncard 100 (the German equivalent which is a bit cheaper). [1]

To contextualize this a bit: Switzerland has about a tenth of the German population (~8.5M vs ~83M)

> I find it even more amazing that there are more people who have a Generalabonnement than a Bahncard 100 (the German equivalent which is a bit cheaper).

GA costs about 50% of a typical monthly Swiss salary.

BC100 costs about 100% of a typical monthly German salary.

Germany has a 8.7 times larger area, and a 7.4 times longer rail network though.

Yes, but in Germany you probably don't travel 8 times as much.

Is there any alternative to this? Because that's about 4 times the price of the normal monthly local bus pass in the US and the UK. Most people don't need to travel around the country, they just need to commute to their jobs.

Yes, there are.

Mostly, but not necessarily, within regional transportation networks.

As a for example: I pay roughly $1200 for one year of travel within the city of Zurich and the adjacent zone including the airport.

This includes any mode of transportation, except taxis.

A Generalabonnement makes more sense, though, commuting from, say, Zurich to Basel, which is not uncommon.

Edited to add: Regional commuter passes also allow for use of intercity trains, provided that they stop within your zone of validity.

ah cool that sounds very reasonable then

If you just want Zürich city it is less, about $850/year

That sounds about right.

Apparently half a million Swiss did the math and decided 4 times that local bus pass price is worth their money. It's not like you have to get a GA. I don't and I'm happy with the half-fare abo, my daughter has a local pass and a half-fare abo (which doesn't help to the local pass reductions), but if you go in the mountains or skiing enough weekends (and many do) you will save lots with the GA - as the mountains are often not in your local bus network.

1/2 fare card is about 170$ a year and gives you 50% off every train ticket.

There are yearly abos for specific routes (home to office, typically) that you can choose for 1/2/3/4/5 days a week. But the price usually gets close enough to a full GA that most people in this situation opt for a GA. And many employers cover the 1/2 fare card or GA for their employees.

SBB also (used to?) has a plan where you get a yearly GA and a Tesla or eGolf in every major train station you arrive. It feels magical: get on any train any time and when you arrive there is a car waiting for you. Use it, get back on the train, and there is another car at your destination for you to drive. It isn’t cheap but it’s a pretty neat concept.

Yes you can only have the smaller passes. But taking the GA is really convenient. You just enter every public transport without thinking about buying a ticket. I had a general abo for years and decided against renewing it when I moved to a job 3min of biking distance from home, I missed it dearly despite owning a car.

You are drunk after a late night. Some sort of public transport will bring you home. You want to do some hiking today? You just go to the nearest train station and decide at the last minute. You want to go to that music festival/concert on the other side of the country? Take the train, have a nap, chitchat or share a meal with your friend for a few hours without the stress of traffic, looking or paying for parking a car at your destination. Train is great, it allows you to move from A to B while basically being at the pub.

You might not need to access your whole country but once you realize you can you use that opportunity and realize your country is much deeper and more interesting than you thought it was.

That's all correct. In addition, you can get almost the same convencience without purchasing an expensive GA by using the EasyRide feature [1]. No more worrying about buying and choosing the right ticket.

[1] https://www.sbb.ch/en/timetable/mobile-apps/sbb-mobile/easyr...

Amazing! Everywhere needs this

However you look at, it's brutality expensive. It's nearly always cheaper to drive.

That depends on a lot of factors. If you live in or around Zürich for example, the median price just to rent a parking space is CHF 200/month, or CHF 2400/yr.

For comparison, an adult GA is CHF 3860/yr, so paying for a parking space in Zürich alone puts you 2/3rd of the way to the cost of public transportation, even disregarding costs like insurance, the car itself, registration, vignette, fuel, vehicle maintenance, tyres and parking costs away from home.

Where did you get the price figure for a parking space in Zürich?

It's CHF 300 per year in a blue zone where you have to find a spot whenever you feel like parking your car.

That number was from Immoscout24 listings of parking spaces for rent [0].

If you have vacant spaces in blue zones near you, that's a viable option. There are plenty of places where that's not the case though.

[0]: https://www.immoscout24.ch/de/parkplatz/mieten/ort-zuerich

I pay 250 / month for a parking space in an underground garage. That's close to the upper limit from what I've seen. Usually, the prices start around 100-150 for a dedicated parking spot outside.

Maintaing a car (bottom line) in Switzerland hits you with a minimum of 800 Franks a month, or almost 10'000 Franks a year.

A first class Generalabonnement is virtually half the price of that.

So, no. It's certainly not cheaper to drive.

Would you mind sharing your numbers? I recently tried to figure out how much my car costs me but it was less than half of your 10'000, so I'm wondering - either I missed something, or you have a rather expensive car.

If you take the deductable tax rate per kilometer, which is 70 Rappen[0], and assume 15000 kilometers a year you get 10'500 Francs per year

If you Google the question you find a variety of answers, but I think looking at it from the tax man's perspective is a good start.

I agree that the cost nay vary, but it can also be significantly higher than 1K per month, depending on the model of car, yearly kilometers and your risk from an insurance perspective.

[0] That's the rate you can deduct from your taxable income per kilometer if you use a private car for work purposes.

Thanks, that clarifies things. The number makes sense as a rough average (which would make sense for the taxes), calling it a 'minimum' was what confused me a little.

And it might be quite a bit faster too. For example, to get to the airport from where I lived would take 3 hours by train and 2 by car.

I wouldn't be so sure. Maybe if you look just at the price of the car itself, but between parking, gas, insurance, maintenance, the actual cost can get fairly high.

I don't know about prices now, but when I lived there, if you actually needed to travel so much that the GA was worth it over the half-fare card, it definitely was worth it over the car, just on gas prices alone.

I'm from the Netherlands, living in Switzerland, and public transport prices in both countries are roughly the same. But other prices + salaries in CH are almost double the ones in NL. Also, punctuality, cleanliness and sitting space in Swiss trains is much better.

So at least comparing to NL, public transport in CH is brutally cheap.

Only if you own the car in the first place and wouldn't part with it by any mean.

Owning a car is brutally expensive.

Swiss expat living abroad. I'm in Switzerland just enough every year to feel the pain of the full fare tickets, and yet not enough to justify the cost of the half-fare card. I live in Asia, but I'm often flying in and out of Switzerland from short hops around Europe, and it's rather shocking and sad to pay far more for the train home from the Airport than my flight cost, almost every single time.

Also then I do fly in long haul, I usually have the choice of a $100 train ride from Zürich or a far cheaper connecting flight to GVA followed by a $30 train. I would much rather take the train from ZRH but it's almost always cheaper to fly.

Switzerland's public transit system is absolutely amazing and I use it anytime I'm in Switzerland — but we have to admit it's one of the most expensive in the world.

> a year of unrestricted travel throughout the (almost) whole country on any train

Any train, or boat, or tram, or bus,... :)

Source: expat in Zürich and loving it!

Not only this, the transportation network is intermodal-synchronized. Meaning that e.g. most buses will come to train stations at times that are convenient to take a train to somewhere, without much waiting. This is achieved by constant numerical simulations and optimizations of real transport patterns.

Has anybody told this to Morges? I would routinely get off the train in Bussigny just to watch the bus leave the bus stop as everyone is arriving. We would collectively let out a sigh of disgust. I've seen many people confront the following bus drivers about this problem, I know the drivers are not in control but some people just vent their frustrations on them anyway.

I even saw a mass walk out of an MBC bus because they were so disgusted with the service. At least the TL (Transport Lausanne) isn't garbage like MBC.

Once per year, you are allowed to complain on https://www.projet-horaire.ch/fr/prise-de-position.html. However, the delay for next years timetable has already passed.

I did this once for a bus to a village which didn't wait on the train and they made corrections for the next scheduling. So I guess it works ?

That's pretty cool, thanks for the info!

The problem with this is that if buses come rarely enough, you can optimize either for bus-train or for train-bus transition, and you could get in the unlucky part :(

MBC was consistently rushing, late and occasionally just never arrived (particularly the 701). I think this is a localized issue though, I don't see this anywhere else.

An interesting contrast to Alberta where you pretty much have to have a car to get to the mountains for hiking, climbing, skiing, biking, scenic dining...

Public transit in the mountain national parks is limited to daily hostel shuttles and a bus between Banff and Jasper. However I have been able to finagle a ride on a tour bus to Takkakaw Falls and come back a week later.

As for provincial parks and trailheads, forget it.

Back in the '80s, a two lane highway was sufficient. The lack of transit has necessitated an extremely expensive twinning of the Trans Canada highway from Alberta to British Columbia.

The Swiss fares and timetables enable people to get their recreation without having a car and paying gas, registration, maintenance, parking...

That's one good way to limit global warming - brought to you in large part by the car centered North American suburb.

It would be interesting to see what will happen if the times of the trains are moved to random other times within the hour. In might well be that short transfer times is just statistical consequence of having many scheduled trains.

There are probably some trains that are intentionally synchronized, but I don't think there's too many of them, because synchronizing all trains is simply impossible. For instance if you have a timetable where it's convenient to transfer from train A to train B, then in the same timetable it will be inconvenient to transfer from B to A since you will have to wait almost 30 minutes (or an hour for hourly trains).

Also a nitpick: "Gemeinde (administrative limit of a city)". Gemeinde means "municipality". All small villages belong to some municipalities.

Author here: it would be a good point of comparison, to generate a random network and look at the same statistics. I will do this maybe in a future article.

I'll be sure to read it. :)

Just to clarify, not another network, just shift all trains by a random number of minutes.

It is possible for train A and train B to arrive at the same time, and depart at the same time, allowing convenient transfers in both directions. From my brief experience on Swiss railways, I found this arrangement to be quite common.

A train usually stops at the station for only around a minute, so there is no time to change to another platform unless another train arrives later.

There are some trains that stop at the big train station for a longer period of time, so it might theoretically be possible. I live in Switzerland and I don't remember ever changing trains like that (though maybe I just didn't notice).

Intercity trains in Switzerland do stop for longer periods. This is a basic feature of the network to facilitate transfers.

Oh but the hubs stations in Switzerland do feature synchronized arrivals and departures on a 30 min schedule. It works so well you don't generally have to look up connections. Just be there at the sync time to board wherever.

This is a plan that shows the hubs and their sync time: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Kn...

You'll notice the ebb and flow of passengers if you sit at a hub for half an hour. Most people won't see the ebb because they're on their connecting train.

If you're wondering about the title here I assume that the writer is a French speaker and is using the word "correspondance" meaning "transfer or connection".

You are right, thanks. I changed it

Having experienced this during an exchange program, without any car there, I never once felt constrained that I couldn't travel where I wanted. A great example that I wish every country aspired to emulate

Switzerland is a very rich country per capita. It can afford to spend a lot on public transit to get a very good service.

That's important to remember when wondering if these ideas could be applied to your country.

Switzerland has also a lot a lot of mountainous landscape and use a lot of tunnels and viaducts. Wages for construction workers are larger, construction work is more expensive.

In some other countries it might be cheaper to build a transit systems using the same ideas.

China has a lot of viaducts and tunnels for its HSR and expressway systems. In fact, it is more of a worse case than Switzerland since it’s major cities aren’t really connected by valleys.

It has approximately the same GDP per capita as the San Francisco Bay Area, while having also about the same population, but more than double the land area. And yet, while I could take a direct train from Basel to Zürich in less than an hour, the similar trip from Berkeley (comparable in size to Basel) to San Jose (much larger than Zürich) would require a minimum of 1 transfer and take over 2 hours. Our trip isn't even cheaper. It would be 17 CHF at full price on SBB, round trip, but it would be $11.40 each way on BART+VTA

The fact is we're rich as anybody here and what we spent our money on is 12-lane freeways.

Not sure how you got that 17CHF, that's the price I get for a single trip with the half fare card (IC3). Full price would be 34CHF each way.

Sorry, you’re right, I double-counted the half card.

High quality public infrastructure is a force multiplier IMO. It's hard to get and a long term investment. But the payoff is huge.

Another good example would be South Korea. The state invested massively in digital/communications/internet infrastructure fairly early on. The results speak for themselves.

Surely large infrastructure projects hinge on execution as well. You need solid processes and engineering competence. But it's generally something that is not solved though competition, but through collaboration and long-term thinking. In the "planting the trees for the next generation" kind of way.

One of the reason Switzerland is a rich country per-capita is that it has used its resources very wisely by investing in ubiquitous public transport throughout the whole country.

I had to be in Genf for an appointment at our temporary embassy (normally living in Zurich) and before the day I bought a "day GA" - a pass that allowed me to travel almost all of Switzerland for a fixed price. The train takes around 3 hours or so one way, so once there, I just hopped on a bus (covered by the GA), did what I went there to do, then did the trip back as well.

I had an electric socket under my seat so I could work on the train.

Cost? 69 CHF for the day. (Or 59? ish.). Cheap enough.

In the area where I live (near Aigle on the east of Leman) the main problem is that there are only two tracks (one each direction) going to Geneva. Which makes it hard to have frequent stops. I live at 100m from the tracks, but I have to do 8km to take the train at Aigle.

I lived in Tokyo for some time, and you have stops everywhere, mainly possible because there is so many tracks running.

But in Switzerland, many places suffers from this.

Yes, as it is very densely build around the tracks, it is now almost impossible to build more tracks without paying a lot.

Not having too many stops makes travelling a lot faster (good for when alternatives exist) and less delay prone, but it sure sucks when the nearest stop is quite far away.

The people running the Boston Transit system REALLY need to read this

Very impressed with the Swiss system. I could consistently take my seat, and watch a station clock as the departure time approached, and the train would inevitably start to roll on the very second. It seemed like the conductors really took pride in the exactness.

It was also worrisome one evening when I was traveling alone with all my ski racing gear (multiple bags and ski bags). The schedule showed elapsed time between stop-departure as one minute at the small town station where I had to disembark. The doors seemed to open randomly at one end of the car or the other, but never both, and no conductor to be found to ask. I got all ready, sprinted with the gear to the open door, got everything off, and the train indeed left in 60 seconds. Fortunately, I was so nervous that I managed to get everything off with about 30sec to spare...

The Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge built during the big dig was designed by a Swiss. I recall reading that during construction the designers visited the site and noticed there being an issue (one of many at the big dig) where the rebar was incorrectly spaced and had to be completely redone or it would have collapsed before the opening.

What's wild is that the width of Switzerland is nearly the distance between SF and LA. We're still figuring out how to build one train line. On mostly flat ground. Maybe when I'm retired we'll have a better transit system

Can confirm. Trains are good. BUT in some situations very expensive, where you have to pay like 20$ for 20 minutes. And it is not transperent, why some roads are more expensive then others.

Theoretically, such an integrated timetable likely also exists in Germany. And I definitely don't want to complain, all connections from my hillbilly home village to the capital run at a one hour clock cycle or better, and I only need to switch trains twice on the whole journey. If it works, it works great, but if any train is late (and usually that's the ICE between Hamburg and Munich), then all bets are off :)

Something like an integrated timetable for Germany is actually in planning: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandtakt, but it looks like it focuses on high speed routes.

i just encountered this video while browsing around from this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTnFpKCAJtE

Very interesting documentation on the process of tunneling.

I'm currently reading this in the Bern train station, since my train to Basel was cancelled altogether.

(Though yes, there's another one soon.)

My train to and from work has been late almost every day since last year. I feel like I don't live in Switzerland. So where are the punctual trains that this article is talking about and I am paying so much for?

This is what you get with averages: you may have lots of problems on one particular line, but compared to the sheer numbers of daily trains in Switzerland that are on time, it doesn't change the average so much.

The same train almost everyday for over a year? I'm sorry but the CFF loves smelling their own farts talking about how great they are but let's be honest here the Romandie part gets treated like a second class citizen. The trains are dirty, I remember seeing the same goop and grime on an inside train wall for over a month (I'm very consistent with my train timing so I ended up mostly taking the same train). The trains are late all the time, even yesterday for a simple trip from Vevey to Lausanne the train was late and I saw a lot of +5 min and more delays for other trains at the stations.

I know things are better in Swiss German parts but my experience has been so I have considered maybe getting a car or anything to avoid the trains.

I am sorry that you have this kind of experience. Vevey - Morges is really a weak point of the network, and I do agree that the Romandie gets treated like a second class citizen.

I also use the train daily to get to Romandie (to Lausanne), and I almost never have problems: maybe the train is late every two weeks by 5 minutes.

Maybe you're lucky or my route is cursed, either way I hope you don't have to go through my awful experience. I've had hours of delays over the past year (and it is making me angry). It's sad but when I would see the delay was on 5mins I would do sigh of relief because 15-20min delays were becoming common and a 5min delay at this point becomes tolerable. Also to add extra salt to the wound, the train would leave 10mins and then wait an extra 10mins in front of the Lausanne station because reasons. In the end a 10min trip became 30mins.

> and I do agree that the Romandie gets treated like a second class citizen.

Does that mean Ticino is a third-class citizen?

I don't think this is true. There were massive investments into the Ticino regional rail network over the last 10-20 years, partially driven by the NEAT extension, which shortened travel times between regional centers (Lugano - Locarno - Bellinzona) dramatically.

What doesn't seem to work well are interconnections with neighboring Italy, but that is likely not due to underinvestment on the Swiss side. Road traffic is therefore still a huge issue in Ticino, as many Italian workers cross the border twice per day by car due to the lack of adequate public transport options.

Have you tried to complain?

I have sent a couple emails to MBC but it was in vain.

> second class citizen

As far as I know, investments in particular in local and regional trains is heavily driven by cantonal investments. For example ZVV (Zürcher Verkehrsverbund) contracts the S-Bahn network from SBB and finances a good part of its operations. While Zurich's network is therefore quite excelent, I am not sure other cantons invest at similar levels and therefore enjoy a worse experience.

No Zurich doesn't invest more they just prepay and ask the SBB for the money back, which is a way to force investment there. Both base tunnels were paid by whole CH but don't really benefit western Switzerland which has to use the most underfunded line between Geneva and Lausanne (2nd and 4th cities by size). If there any kind of issue on the 2 tracks the traffic between the cities is blocked. About half of the train are late, as there is way too much traffic and a single glitch everything crumble. Some works created a big hole andthe line was cut for 3 weeks. nobody in the Swiss German part gave a heck about it. If the line between Bern and Zurich (with no backup) was cut for 3 weeks it would be a national drama… If you don't believe me, just look at the stats regarding late train between Western Switzerland and the rest of the country. It's very telling.

Which train are you taking? There may be construction and it is planned. Or it might be the train from Milan which no mater what the SBB tries to do is always late! Then again if you have ever been to Milano Centrale you kind of understand...

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