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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 $500 + petrol. For 2 people getting 2 all inklusive Tickets would still be cheaper.
I would say, if you take single tickets (even with the half-fare card), the tickets are quite more expensive than the trip with a normal car (counting costs of car, of gas, insurrance, ...).
However, if you have a monthly fare because you go somewhere regularly, it is still expensive, but much more managable.
The monthly General Abo (unlimited travel for all public transports in Switzerland) is ~340$/month. A parking spot in a city could already be from 80$ to 200$ a month.
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.
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.
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 :(
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.
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).
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".
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_2000
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 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-...
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.
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...
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?
The trains run more often and go to more places than any other place I've ever been to.
Finally, this was the first time in over 20 years of light rail use in Switzerland that I experienced this.
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.
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..."
https://company.sbb.ch/de/ueber-die-sbb/verantwortung/die-sb...
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
Isn’t it paid for through ticket fees? 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.
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.
You can subsidize public transit/rail or you can subsidize highways. Which has a better 'ROI' when high oil prices come along? :)
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
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/...
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.
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.
Any train, or boat, or tram, or bus,... :)
Source: expat in Zürich and loving it!
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...
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 $500 + petrol. For 2 people getting 2 all inklusive Tickets would still be cheaper.
However, if you have a monthly fare because you go somewhere regularly, it is still expensive, but much more managable.
The monthly General Abo (unlimited travel for all public transports in Switzerland) is ~340$/month. A parking spot in a city could already be from 80$ to 200$ a month.
I 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.
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 ?
Deleted Comment
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.
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.
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).
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.
Just to clarify, not another network, just shift all trains by a random number of minutes.