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Comment by contagiousflow | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain how adding frequency to the train network will not work to compensate higher ridership?

It's not simple with the "clock-face scheduling" system which is used which times the trains to all meet at the big nodes (Zürich, Bern, Basel) so connections work. To achieve this trains are supposed to fit into 30/60/120 minute beats which synchronise the entire system. See [1,2] for how this works.

Also many of the most important parts of the system are at capacity. Bigger trains can help but a lot of these gains have already been realised in the crowded areas. The current hope is digitalising signaling to allow density to be increased but that's not simple/cheap even if it's cheaper than working on the lines themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMbV1rIPhCg

I'm not saying this is wrong, that makes a lot of sense. But on the other hand why have I never heard of other, much more dense countries facing this problem? I just never hear of Japan, China, Germany, Taiwan, etc seeing overcrowded trains and raise their hands saying "there can't possibly be a solution!"

Germany's passenger rail is notoriously failing. China is big and empty compared to Switzerland so there's lots of room to build. Japan's population is stagnant, and so train use might be stagnant too. (No idea about Taiwan.)

What does it have to do with they way they have to manage way higher population density? Singapore is 2/3 Swiss population on 1/3 of the Canton of Vaud.. They are 18 Chinese cities with a population over 10 million.

Good for them I guess?

Not everyone wants to live in a Chinese style mega city.

Fwiw I am a foreigner in Switzerland (I live in Zürich) and I can definitely understand why the people of Switzerland don’t want it more crowded.

> Japan's population is stagnant, and so train use might be stagnant too. (No idea about Taiwan.)

Japan's number of tourists has famously exploded over the last decade, and they take trains more than the resident population.

It's not impossible, but Switzerland's geography means tunneling is involved in adding capacity which makes it very expensive. Also the beautiful synchronisation of a country-wide integrated timetable where you can reliably get between any two places in the country with connections that always make sense is a point of national pride.

Japan, Taiwan and China all added dedicated infrastructure which took a long time and cost a fortune (vs the shared tracks currently used for intercity/regional/European freight). Tokyo accepts famously absurd levels of overcrowding during peak hours. Deutsche Bahn in Germany is widely thought of a joke due to chronic underinvestment meaning on-time trains are surprising.

That said, these technical concerns have nothing to do with the 10 million proposal. It's worth asking why a camp that spent decades opposing sustainability legislation has suddenly discovered the word now that it can be pointed at immigration.

Yeah there's tons of work ongoing. Lots of line close to the big hubs have ongoing construction to eventually switch to 15min takt.

Improvements on various train station (new underground stations in Geneva and Luzern, extra platforms, etc.).

https://company.sbb.ch/en/railway-development/future-rail/na...

(for example, there's also lots of tram, etc. projects)

I have visited India, and if you ever travel on a train in Mumbai, you will understand what overpopulation really means. Your body will be pressed against other people’s bodies. To get on the train, you have to learn how to do gymnastics. They are absolutely not managing crowd better.

Nonsense. Rail 2035 is already planning on moving to 15min frequency. That increases capacity and makes connectivity better. 30 minute beats are not a law of nature. That's already planned for on the most important lines and could be done for more lines as well. Clearly you have not even spent 5min researching Swiss rail policy. Switzerland literally planning rail policy 20+ years ahead of time.

Rail 2050 plan has many improvements beyond that, and is still in discussion, and we could have many more if politicians were not afraid of large projects. And if parties like SVP would endlessly prevent good projects and instead want more money spend on idiotic highway expansions.

We literally just voted on blocking highway expansion only for the SVP to say 'sure we voted but all these projects should go ahead anyway'. Fucking insane.

They are blaming immigration for the problems their policy causes.

I could continue and give you a long list of bad choices they make that literally make everything worse, only for them to blame immigration. All the buses are full, but we wont allow any bus lanes to exist because car drivers need priority. City is full of cars but can't have people on bikes and use less space because that could mean subsidized parking would go away in a city where few people own cars. The list goes on and on.

Our problems are dumb polices, not immigration. These polices would be fucking dumb even if we did not have migration.

You can't add more trains if the schedule is full to the brink. You would need to add train tracks, and that requires big projects

And it is in fact so full that traibs crossing over from Germany sometimes get denied entry into the Swiss networks because there's no room to fit them in the schedule.

uh they get denied entry if they are late because german trains often are and it wreaks havoc on swiss timetabling where trains still generally depart to the minute and many commuters plan their day around making connections with a 2 minute change time. if the ICE from basel to zurich is late then switzerland runs their own replacement in its spot and denies entry to the german train to avoid knockon delays.

yes the schedule is full but its not just no space for more trains, more no space for unpredictable trains

The Netherlands should do this as well, maybe DB will then at some point figure out how to run a train on time. The ICEs from Germany are more often late than on time, which then causes delays for other trains using the same tracks.

AFAICT they only get denied if they are not on time.

Well that was my point. They come late, and there's nowhere to stick them in the schedule because it's already full.

These big projects are happening as we speak, so this is not the culprit - as much as the publicity of one side would like to make it.

In many areas the train network is already at capacity.

Frequency is basically 15 minutes almost all over the country already

That's almost laughably infrequent - you can use single level trains with more doors to triple that without even going to automation.

Has any railway network managed to get less than 15 minute headways? Metros don't count, they're isolated and often enclosed.

At some point we had 10m intercity intervals between Rotterdam/utrecht and Utrecht/Amsterdam in NL.

Seems like it's 4 per hour on Rotterdam/Utrecht, seems similar to Geneva/Lausanne with 6 per hour.

In any case, I think commuters are fine with every 15 min, as long as there's enough seats. (for long distance like trains, my feeling is that frequency below 15min doesn't have a lot of impact, unlike shorter distance public transport like tram/bus/subway)

Jup, quite common in the Netherlands. There are 10 minute trains from Utrecht to Amsterdam. And form Rotterdam and Den Haag to Schiphol. And from Utrecht to Den Bosch and Eindhoven.

Most of these are double decker trains and long platforms so they move a lot of people at once.

Most of Tokyo's mass transit network is absolutely neither isolated nor enclosed, and operates with vastly higher frequencies.

Here's is the timetable for a suburban station on a commuter lines: https://train-cloud.navitime.biz/en/odakyu/railroads/timetab...

On a weekday at peak hours, there are up to 20+ trains an hour, with commuter trains continuing directly into Metro systems, and directly onto different commuter lines on the other end.

The highest frequency city pairs I can think of, at peak periods, looking at available tickets this week:

Shanghai Hongqiao to Hangzhou East is about 10 high speed trains per hour, all trains using the same line.

Tokyo to Shin-Osaka is also about 10 high speed trains per hour.

Taipei to Taichung is 8-9 trains per hour, high speed + conventional. Shanghai to Suzhou is similar.

Rome to Florence is 6-7 trains per hour.

Hong Kong West Kowloon to Shenzhen North is 6 high speed trains per hour.

Beijing South to Tianjin is 5-6 high speed trains per hour.

The Tokaido shinkansen has as low as 3 minute headways at peak times.

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