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.
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.
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".
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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...
[+] [-] mfsch|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_2000
[+] [-] londons_explore|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jokteur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belter|3 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] michaelscott|3 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] bigDinosaur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoe|3 years ago|reply
https://company.sbb.ch/de/ueber-die-sbb/verantwortung/die-sb...
[+] [-] config_yml|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] runeks|3 years ago|reply
Isn’t it paid for through ticket fees? Or is it subsidized by the state?
[+] [-] immmmmm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CaptainZapp|3 years ago|reply
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/...
[+] [-] tragomaskhalos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baq|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atemerev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archerx|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] BXLE_1-1-BitIs1|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] eterevsky|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] denni9th|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lolc|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jokteur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgrahamc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokteur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neosat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|3 years ago|reply
That's important to remember when wondering if these ideas could be applied to your country.
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
The fact is we're rich as anybody here and what we spent our money on is 12-lane freeways.
[+] [-] dgb23|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bigbizisverywyz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|3 years ago|reply
In some other countries it might be cheaper to build a transit systems using the same ideas.
[+] [-] _zoltan_|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kuon|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cinntaile|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokteur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toss1|3 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] sschueller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alx__|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelRazum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flohofwoe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Narretz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rspoerri|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTnFpKCAJtE
Very interesting documentation on the process of tunneling.
[+] [-] jkarni|3 years ago|reply
(Though yes, there's another one soon.)
[+] [-] archerx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokteur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|3 years ago|reply