In Switzerland you have to look at the public transport as a complete system. Not just the train. Every Train, every Bus, even the Ships on the lakes are synchronized. This is what really makes the differance. You have nearly no place where you have to wait for a new connection. Switzerland is not about fast train, its about fast connections. But this is only possible because the Public transport is strongly backed by the population. The swiss goverment invest a load of money into the railway System. In many Countries trains are seen as something nice to have. In Switzerland public transport are seen as essential.
This good connections from local bus to local trains to major railway lines is the basis of the Swiss success. There are quite some countries with excellent long distance lines eg Germany or France, excellent connections between Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin - the difference comes, when you get down from the ICE or TGV: connections are not coordinated and sooner or later you find yourself with some 50 or 90 minutes to spend in some ill-kempt railway station in the middle of nowhere - and the buses to the villages run three times a day, if you're lucky. Like this, private cars are almost mandatory for mobility. In Switzerland, the coordinated connections feed passengers from everywhere to the main lines - you can travel by train with good connections not only from Zurich to Bern (Intercity) but also from Schlieren to Adelboden (S-Bahn - Intercity - RegioExpress - Postbus)
Fun fact: Zurich Station is the 51st busiest railway station in the world. It may not sound impressive but if you remove all the Japanese stations Zurich becomes 6th. What makes it more impressive is that Zurich isn't populated in particular. It has 400k people in city proper and 1.6 million in the metropolitan area.
Here is the list when you remove all Japanese stations 1. Gare du Nord (Paris) 2. Taipei 3. Gare de Chatelet (Paris) 4. Roma Termini 5. Hamburg Hauptbahnhof 6. Zürich Hauptbahnhof
I live near zurich( in Winterthur) and for all swiss people zurich is huge. Because theirs no bigger City in switzerland. Its funny to see how small people from other countries think zurich is.
@@kaimuller7819 My city in Japan is Hamamatsu, which has 800,000 people. And barely anybody outside Japan even recognize it lol. To be fair people know the automobile companies that originate there (Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha)
It always fascinates me, that in Switzerland you can get absolutely EVERYWHERE on public transit. There are trains almost everywhere, and even when there is no train, you can still take a bus.
There is a roule in the Swiss law that says, every Vilage with more then 100 peoples has to have a connection to the public transport network. This non profitable connections are payed by the tax.
@@unifaeggi Wow, that would be a game changer here in Spain. My city has 4 small villages under it's control, and I think only one is connected properly, thanks to it being next to a mildly important route. But frequencies are abismal for one of them (buses only tuesdays and thursdays) and none existent to the other two, because they aren't in the middle of any important transport route. They should try to cover it in gulliver buses, if only to make those small villages more part of the city, and maybe also try to connect to the train station, which is very far from the city and impossible to get to without a car or a taxi.
@@signodeinterrogacion8361 I think many counties focused too heavy to the height speed rail. Most counties shorten their Railway network, to cut cost, and build fancy height speed railways.Some years ago I was on a train trip to the Kanton of Fribourg.. The last etape i was on a small local train. There was only a few peoples on bord. But the Train was brand new. The Track was an slow old track who exist for sure over 100 years. But moast of the stations are moderniced only months ago. All accessible for dissabled. In some parts they even have had brand new stations. So you can ask, why Switzerland invest so much money for a railway track nobody us? The people in this region are used to the car. Many dosen't even know at the time, that this connection exists with a half hour connection. So why waste money for this? The anser is simple. Only because people dont miss the railway dosent mean the wont use it. You have first to build new connections, and after some years the people start using it. In the end, this connection will help keep the cars out of the city in future.
@@theTHwa3tes11 If you break it down on a per capita basis, China doesn't even come close. The only reason they end up on top of some statistics is because China is a huge country with a huge population. In my opinion, having a few high quality train lines between large cities just isn't enough to qualify as a "top country". That being said, there's also freight that people always overlook. This is where Japan's railway system falls way behind other countries, because they barely use it for freight. The problem here is that freight isn't dependent on travel time like passengers are, so one metric is almost entirely defined by the size of the country (Russia, Canada, the USA, Australia all end up at the top). The other metric, that doesn't use distance as much, puts China behind Switzerland and Austria at least per capita. Of course, you can argue that long railways are also an achievement, which is true, but I don't think it's the same as synchronizing freight and passenger trains on a complex network with high train density.
It's the reason for success, yes. But it's NOT a reason for punctuality! It's actually the other way around: Punctuality is NEEDED for the timetable system to work. The reasons for the punctuality are more complex: Good infrastructure, especially enough capacity, good planning, good maintenance, enough trains in reserve to replace broken trains, etc.
One thing that shocked about travelling on the Swiss railways was how smooth the trains acceleration was when pulling out of the station. If I had my eyes closed, I almost wouldn't have been able to feel the acceleration. This is a very stark contrast to other countries.
Totally agree, but I feel like this is the case for most long range Services, at least here in Germany. It’s the same for loco-hauled regional trains, other than newer multiple unit trains that can give shorter bursts of acceleration if needed.
@@peterw.8434 interesting, I didn't consider that. I've only been on electric multiple units doing urban transport here in Australia, so it makes sense that an intercity train would be smoother
@@TheCrunchifiedOne That makes sense, our urban rail here in Berlin (S-Bahn) sometimes feels like a rollercoaster, especially the older trains were you literally feel the engine spooling up 😅… But its fine that way, great acceleration is needed as the stations are usually less than ~1,5Km apart.
@@peterw.8434 The moast trains of Switerland can acclerate really fast. but they normally not do it. Only if they are behind the timetable. This has to do with an energy saving strategy of the SBB.
Some points i'd like to mention: 1) The fast and complete electrification of Swiss Railways strated after WW1 and the shortage of coal caused by the war. 2) The SBB had in the 19-hundrets the policy: "as fast as needed, not as fast as possible" with the idea that all long distance trains in the big station shall arive just before a full hour and leave just after a full hour, so pasangers can change in any direction without a long waitingtime 3)the timetableplaning does include all stages of public transport from long distance trains down to local busses. I regullary use connections like tram, change to tram, change to S-Bahn, change to bus or bus, change to S-Bahn, change to Intercity change to tram and you hardly ever have waitingtimes higher than 5 minutes, even on sundays. 4) you can trust connectins, even if you have just three minutes to change from one train to another, you'll get it in at least nine and a half of ten cases
I feel like it is not mentioned enough how well the trains connect with other public transport. Buses for example always depart after a train arrives, and in the rare case that a train is delayed, the buses will wait for the train to arrive so people don't miss the connection. You don't even need to plan your trip as a local, you just take the train and can be almost 100% sure theres gonna be a bus to take you wherever you need to go that departs at latest 15 minutes after the train arrives. The public transport is so good that as a person that lives near Zurich, i feel like I often forget to appreciate it. It's basically as reliable as walking...
One honorable mention left out was how the route Zurich-Berne (and vice versa) is so profitable for the company, that it's one of the reasons they lost so much money this year, due to homeoffice
@@johannesfranck1770 No, most of them use Halbtax. Also many use public transport only two or three times a week, or instead of the bicycle when it rains, erc. In the case of the Bern-Zürich line there are a lot of GA holders, but they have been refunded if they were in a home office or similar situation.
US - that is what you want. Do not start with TGVs or shinkansen connections - you want to connect within the bigger metro areas like in Switzerland then you think about high speed rail. Connect Chicago and Milwaukee in 30 minutes, not Chicago and Detroit in 4 hours. It's cheaper but employs loads of people and has significant effects from the start.
and you will vastly reduce a lot of the congestion on the road. In switzerland we don't really have an underground in any city, but we have a really tight "s-bahn" network that functions almost like undergrounds. The trains however drive longer distances, so they come into the urban area as a commuter train from the agglomeration and then within the city they (together with trams), work like a traditional underground
@@louissikkema5399 I'm Austrian - may I ask, when do you guys in Switzerland start with S-Bahn? I mean I am living in between Linz and Vienna and we have a sprawl of smaller cities, larger of which around 50.000 inhabitants. To have a network between those would be awesome, but I'm curious, when does regional S-Bahn in Switzerland start (knowing that most Swiss cities do not have millions of inhabitants)
@@TheWoblinGoblin that depends, so the s-bahn is pretty much centered on zürich, but it connects the whole of central switzerland. Then it is complemented by other regional providers, that link their schedules to the zürich s-bahn. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Bahnen_in_der_Schweiz This wiki link explains it quite well (also the difference of the zurich s-bahn and the regional trains that are just called s-bahn)
@@TheWoblinGoblin S-Bahn initially was independent from a timetable perspective and focus was only on connecting suburbs to centers/downtown but meanwhile, whether it is S-Bahn, regional commuter, inter regio or intercity, all that matters is that they have a high frequency and the timetable is highly integrated to all other public transport systems.
@@hansmuster4299 yeah, I know the Sbahn concept very well from Vienna. I am living in a regional center about 100 km away, so we have about 30 min connections to Vienna. Now we are - internationally speaking very small with about 50.000 people but a good SBahn would easily connect about 50 - 80.000 more, and those would have a fast connection to Vienna (a 1h commute would be better than now by car). Knowing that Switzerland connects smaller cities I was just curious if there are use cases like that in Switzerland. I have to read up on wikipedia, couldn't yet
Really cool video! Btw, another Swiss railway company that is worth saying is the RhB (Rhätische Bahn). They have a railway network in the canton of Graubünden in southern Switzerland. They're really famous for their Unesco world heritage routes: the Bernina line and the Albula line with the impressive Landwasser viaduct. Would be cool if one of the next videos could be about the Norwegian or Swedish railways. Keep up your good work! :)
I find it funny that Swiss mountain railways (including the RhB) have more modern trains than US cities. Just Google "RhB Capricorn" and you'll see what I mean.
@@lukasegeling5205 i really don't like how they look. I loved the allegra and they should've kept the design language. It's just the same with the zb adler and fink: they're extremely ugly, especially so compared to the spatz...
Very good. I think however, that one very important fact that boosted the Swiss Railways, was the introduction of the Bahn2000 concept in the early 1990s, defining the timetables completely new, introducing the concept of the Taktfahrplan. This was the major boost to make timetables easy and predictable, transfer connections at major hubs shorter, and all public transport is integrated into that concept, also local bus lines, etc. have their timetables aligned to make optimal transfers. And not to forget that we invested significant amounts into upgrading the railway tracks, making faster connections, new bypasses, etc. to increase passenger throughput in the last 30 years.
One interesting point worth mentioning: Stadler, the company SBB ordered their new trains from, is a Swiss company, too. Which helps secure my workplace, I am writing software for a company whose biggest customer is Stadler.
I love Stadler trains, I live near Zurich and I always appreciate riding a Stadler train more than the others, don't really understand why they aren't more renouned internationally and why the SBB don't just buy all trains from them. They feel really spacious and the ride is very comfortable, and from what Ive heard Stadler is quite precise with their delivery dates and the trains are reliable, unlike those new tilting ones from Bombardier...
One omission made in this video that I find very curious: Switzerlands extensive narrow gauge network. Most of which has nothing to do with the federal railways, and never have. IMHO the story about Swiss railways becomes very incomplete without delving into this large chunk of the countrys rail system (The RhB covers virtually all of Graubunden on their own, for example...).
Another important point about the Swiss railways system is the huge number of viaducts and tunnels (including spiral tunnels) because a large part of the country is montainous. Another point : many regional lines use narrow metric lines (around 1,400 km overall). There are no new high speed lines, but tilt trains are used on some lines for faster speed. You can find on UA-cam many videos shot from the train driver's cabin in Switzerland, some of them are very spectacular.
As I live in Switzerland I am absolutely fascinated with the railway system andlearningg about all the new train routes, plans etc and thehistoryy and this video explains a lot of it thank you so much!
I take the Swiss train everyday coming from Geneva’s border country town in France and I must say this video was very informative ! Well done ! Never stop with these incredible video’s !
@@tawansrithrachaikul4573 yes I have, and I strongly disagree. First Singapore is a city state and therefore doesn’t have proper trains . They’re basically all metros. Second the Singapore MRT have hard plastic seats (Switzerland and Japan have cushy cloth or velour seats) and boring designs for the trains both inside and outside.
@@AlohaBiatch Hard plastic seats are way better than cushy cloth because it is much easier to clean and way more hygienic. Do you like to sit in a seat that got absorbed by someone else’s sweat? Or perhaps someone spilled sth and it dried? Probably not.
@@tawansrithrachaikul4573 Ive never seen a dirty seat in my 11 years living in Switzerland. The trains are always extremely clean. They clean them once every few hours (they have people in bright orange outfits going in and cleaning up at terminus stations). Why would I want to break my back on a plastic seat.
After watching your video on the Dutch system first, I think that the Swiss system should be looked at again in greater detail. I have been impressed that the Swiss have chosen to place a higher degree of importance on the inter-connectedness of their trains than speed. So when you get into a station and need to connect with another train, even a local train, the time between trains is short, and often its just as easy as a cross platform walk. Not only does this apply to the large stations but even down to the third tier stations. Even a point to point ride that involves 2 or 3 transfers can generally be done seamlessly with little sense of lost time. I'm guessing it also connects with private and postal buses. They seemed to have designed a system that works for much of the whole country, not just the heavy traffic cities. All done in a country of 8M people and which is largely mountainess. I would be glad to let the Swiss take over Amtrak in the east. They could probably do twice as much as the do nothings at Amtrak.
But what I like the most is that while you have different railway operators you only have one ticket that works for and they are also timed together. For example you could travel from montreux to Zug with 4 different railway companys (MOB, BLS, ZB, SBB) but you only need one ticket for it.
Thank you for this amazing video! Could you make a video talking about the Dutch railways? It connects major and minor cities across the country and means short travel times between cities.
The commercials were very well-placed, occurring at natural breaking points in the video. In my experience, this is unusual with UA-cam. I appreciated it.
Switzerland is the best! Extreme punctuality, great comfort, service, interchange options to local public transport. Absolutely the nr 1. After Switzerland Japan is 2nd. And then there are different options for #3. In my country the Netherlands some aspects are comparable to Switzerland like service frequency (even better in NL), vertical integration, timetable consistency and hybrid system (state and private railways). But Dutch rail is lacking on punctuality, is fragile in rather normal winter weather, no dedicated surburban rail, no rail catering and some other issues.
Your trains go more often than every 30 minutes on intercity lines? Timetable to remember only by the minute of departure because it’s the same every hour at the same platform ? One ticket for all transport you need,Train-Tram-Bus-Metro-Ship-Funicular-Cable Cars-Rack Rail ? Do you think the SBB is the only operator? A one year general ticket for all sorts of transport for the salary of one month?
Intercity lines between major cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Arnhem, Zwolle: every 10-15 minutes. Timetable minute of departure always the same: yes, since 1938 nationwide, earlier than in Switzerland. One ticket for all transport: yes, for intercity, local trains, buses, metro, trams there is the OV-card. But in terms of punctuality, service and comfort Switzerland is clearly superior. And yes, I know, I have been in Switzerland many times :)
@@aoilpe what „salary of one month“ are you talking? Are you talking about the salary a student gets with a job with no qualifications? Because otherwise, GA/HT are still unbeaten in cost/km ratio compared to any other offering in any other country
@@jimi272If you mean a 100% job : Yes And it’s for ALL sorts of Transportation! Not just trains and buses...ALL of them ! All times - everywhere - one full year ! If more than 1 million citizens travel with the GA ,out of 8,5 millions, shows the success of it...
Brilliant video. Always been fascinated by the Swiss railways. The key points for me were - 100% electrified, makes a profit (Covid years not counted), that the whole public transport system is integrated and synchronised, overcome considerable geographic challenges (namely mountains
I was born in Switzerland and live in Switzerland. It is the best place in the world for public transportion, they apologize for 3 minutes delay here. In my opinion you really don't need a car here.
Still cheaper than using the car, that's how it should be you should have a good but affordable public transport system which garanties you a better and cheaper transportation than a car. Should not this is be one of the priorities of an government and not make war?
I think you missed some major reasons why the Swiss transportation system is so good from a global perspective. It is clearly not because of the speed of the trains, low prices, or an exceptional level of comfort. Punctuality is one of the reasons, true, but more important is the fact that services run very frequently, on fixed intervals (e.g. exactly every 30 minutes), have short but seamless connections with both other train services and with local transportation (e.g. buses), that there is a unified ticketing system allowing you to travel fully flexibly (you also never need reservations)... These things explain why so many people use trains in Switzerland for their daily commutes, which is perhaps not uncommon in the rest of (Western) Europe, but is unseen in most other parts of the world.
Another important point is the massive investement made..for lines, infrastructures and rolling stock..i have read that is the higher Yearly per capita in the world
Next Austria or Netherlands, please. Their railways are great! I think, rail systems in Switzerland, Austria and Netherlands are the best in Europe. After them are Germany, France and Britain of course.
I think that when the Swiss railway networks went full 100% electric, it also meant way lower air pollution. Though not completely free of it, hence the institution of several truck on flat car operations, necessary to improve the air quality in Alpine valleys that are *HIGHLY* sensitive to air pollution.
Being electric doesn't necessarily mean it's clean, for example trains in Poland are electric but the electricity comes from coal. In Switzerland the electricity for trains comes mostly (if not totally) from dams that are actually owned by SBB so yes, you are right in saying it's clean or cleaner.
@@notproplayer3649 When Swiss railways went electrical close to all electricity in Switzerland was produced by hydroelectric power plants. SBB owns and operates even their owen hydroelectric power plants including artificial lakes (even pump storage power plant). At the moment 90% of the electric power is from hydroelectric power plants, the remaining 10% from nuclear. But one detail: when railway enthusiast reopened the Furka mountain pass line (abandoned when Furka base tunnel was opened in 1982) they gave up the idea of rebuilding the electric power systems (to expensive, especially as trains were not planned to run in winter any more). So they use now historic steam locomotives (even recovered from Vietnam where they were sold almost 100 years ago) and diesel powered also old locomotives. More at www.dfb.ch
A major fact for the success of railway in Switzerland is the geology. Half of the country is located within the alps. Trains use tunnels since they were invented, because they can't go up steep hills. (Well apart from the cogwheel trains, but that's a subject for another video) Therefore, in many cases it is faster taking a train rather than the car, which takes hours either to drive around a mountain or winding roads above them. And in Winter, lots of snow will lead to road closures.
I had assumed that the Swiss railway system was fully nationalized, so I'm amazed that so many different companies operate it so smoothly and efficiently. I live in the US, and I'm jealous.
Well, they are private Companies, but moast of them are fully owned by the goverment. So the goverment has basically full controll on this Companies. Only on the fright trains are fully private companies around. But in differance to US the passenger trains have the big market. Also the passenger trains have in europe the hight priority, where in US and Kanada the fright trains has the hight priority. US Train system is simply anymore designed for passenger trains. There are a few exeptions, but there is anymore a working Rail Network like in Europe.
Holland next. Another dynamic European nation with a top national railway network connecting every part of the country as well as the Schiphol airport, and with also international high-speed links
Brazil... Despite it basically not having intercity passenger trains anymore, I think it would be interesting to look at the history and the cargo market.
This video is awesome shoing the facts about the swiss rail network and SBB in general. However at 14:04 you‘re not showing Bern Central station but rather it‘s the Station Biel/Bienne which is in deed in the canton of Bern. Otherwise keep up the good work. Would love to see you focusing on German, french and U.S. rail network in the upcoming videos.
Amazing video! I'd say, It would be interesting to make video on:Australia, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Japan, Taiwan, Czechia and South Korea.
There's a lot of very interesting information given, particularly on the history. However, I have the impression that the video gives a quite distorted picture of the overall situation. A viewer without any background knowledge about the Swiss public transport system may get the impression that "railway in Switzerland" is basically the SBB, the SOB (which is by far not the biggest railroad company in Switzerland besides the SBB), and some "intruders" from neighboring countries (DB, ÖBB, TGV Lyria). But what about companies like the BLS, and the entire narrow-gauge network (with the RhB as the largest player, with almost 400 km of tracks alone), which make the remote mountainous regions easily accessible? To me, the major features of Swiss public transport are the unified and harmonized tariff, which allows you to travel the entire country (across all its railroad and other public transport companies) with one single ticket - something they sadly don't even get managed in Germany - and the integrated "clock" timetable, which allows for frequent - at least hourly - and smooth connections between any two points via the hub stations throughout the country (that is, as long as there's no major disturbance, which definitely happens from time to time). Another point worth mentioning is that Switzerland has the world's highest railroad density *despite* the fact that at least 50 % of the country are not really suitable for building infrastructure. All this information I would have expected in such a video documentary...
It's even funnier when you use the SBB Mobile App. It will send you notifications with the same jingle at the stations and it nearly perfectly matches it on time. 👌🏼
Wow, just the fact that all almost all showed footage was really form Switzerland makes this an extremely well made video. Well researched and presented. Thank you
Me when I suddenly see a clip of the small city I live in in a random yt video about the whole of switzerland: "A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one"
My SBB insiders tell me, that behind the scenes, tension is huge. The "Rollmaterial" the trains, waggons etc. is highly used and so is the personal. There is shortage on personel too. But like my fellow countrymen already wrote: the public transportation system is just awesome most of the time. I love it. In over fourty years I have only used the "ÖV" (Öffentlicher Verkehr - Public Transportation) and no car.
I have experienced the railways of at least 50 different countries on 3 continents. The Swiss railway system is not the best in the world, it is in a class of its own. N.B.: I have not been to Japan... so I reserve my opinion on that system!
First of all I want to congratulate you on the excellent content you offer on this channel, svaka ti cast! This is the first video I watched and it will definitely not be the last one :-) Being originally from Morocco and having lived in the Balkans, I would love to see videos about the railway systems of these two!
Malaysia: East Coast Rail Link Project It is one of the biggest infrastructure project in the country that connects Port Klang on the Straits of Malacca to Kota Bharu in northeast Peninsular Malaysia, connecting the East Coast Economic Region states of Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan to one another, and to the Central Region of the Peninsular's west coast.
Could you please make a video next time about the railways in Czechia containing current problems, service quality, inspector institutions and share of private railway companies? Thank you.
@@jakubjoachim8029 No worries. English is not my mother tongue neither :) I wonder the reason behind this phenomena. Would you mind giving me more details about it? I mean is it because of insufficient quality in operations management or capacity overload or sth else? Thank you.
Austria is a mixed case, some lines lost most or all of their traffic or have disappeared alltogether (Erzberg, Lavanttal, Gesäuse etc). Certainly service on some lines is great, though it would be even better to have hourly service throughout and not as it is a mix of one and two hour rhythms. So if you take Switzerland as best practice Austria still has a way to go.
Recording to the latest RPI (rail performance index, from 2017) the order is: swiss, denmark, finnland, germany, austria, sweden, france. These are also the only European rail systems in tier 1 quality level.
@@canuzzi knowing the German system, i would bei very Interested to know what they actually measure (e.g. I Always thought the Italian system to be more reliable - at least in the Emilia Romagna)
Could you explain why motorails aren't more popular? It sounds like a good idea to me: drive your car onto a train, go to sleep, and the next day you're in another country. I guess most people preferred to drive themselves or rent a car at the destination, but with limited-distance electric cars becoming more popular, motorails could be a solution to go over a larger distance while charging your car. Compared to renting, there'd be less hassle and you have less luggage hauling to do.
Tbh we swiss like to complain that they are never on time but tbh they nearly always are and if the train does not come the next one is here in like 30mins
Great video with a ton of interesting and useful information. Well done! You ommited or forgot to discuss the national ""Taktfahrplan" (national timetable), imho. Switzerland is the only country in the world that has such a nationally syncronized timetable between ALL modes of public transport across an entire nation. This should be the content of a whole video by itself, as the german government has finally understood the importance of such a national timetable and wants to create a "light" version to improve its services, as a full version seems out of reach for the country and prohibitively epensive. Switzerland took more than 30 years to impement this national system!
Switzerland felt like a fairytale when I went there. France and Germany also had chad railways networks. If you wanted to talk about another great railway network you could perhaps talk about Japan's.
You should make a video about Greek Railways, and the SIGNIFICANT changes in the past 2 decades (with more to come), because it is a very under-reported rail system
Great video. I would like to see comparisons when you show us data. It is difficult to grasp some of the data without it. Thanks for uploading, i enjoyed it very much.
Switzerland is an interesting case because unlike other European countries, there was not one important national railway and a few local branch lines ("private" or owned by communities), but a number of different companies operating through traffic, even international traffic. One of those not explicitly mentioned in the video is the BLS (Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon) which opened one of the important Alpine crossings in 1913, electrified from the beginning, and today also includes lines that were consolidated into Regionalverkehr Mittelland in the 1990s. After an agreement with SBB they took over most of the commuter services around Bern and some around Luzern, while SBB operates intercity trains over the BLS lines. BLS Cargo international operates freight trains throughout Europe. BLS also operates the new Lötschberg base tunnel since 2007. And there is an important meter gauge network in the south and southeast of the country, especially the Rhätische Bahn in the southeast, connecting to the matterhorn gotthard bahn crossing over into the southwest. Besides operating famous tourist trains like the Glacier-Express and Bernina-Express, RhB also provides important local passenger and freight transportation in its area.
Thank you for these explanations! We agree that we could mentioned BLS and present the situation with narrow gauges in Switzerland, however, we tried to be as concise as possible. There will be another opportunities to deal with those topics!
@@uncinarynin Ye the rhaetische bahn is great, always impressive when going to the mountains to see what kind of terain they have to deal with and how well used those tracks are, for passengers as for cargo.
I would love to see a video about Serbia. There is a project connecting 2 biggest cities and plans to connect the 3 biggest and then to neighboring coutries which is all along the European corridor 10 and part of Chinas Belt and Road project. It is not really high speed, it will go 200km/h but it is a huge change for the country considering the previous speeds.
@@aoilpe Yea... they have the money and are willing to invest in Serbia which is what it needs right now to grow. There is so much happening, the country is really chainging, new companies are coming and opening their factories, there are many roads and highways being built and if we waitied for the EU none of that would still be happening. I really love the EU but they are really slow, it feels like they dont really care about us, and now that people see that we dont need to wait for them to help us, that we can do it with the help of China there is less people that want to join the EU.
Been to Switzerland many times and travelled on its amazing train service the best in the world our trains in Wales are awful late cancelled and over crowded really poor service
Second largest traincompany in Switzerland is BLS from Berne, which operates local services in Berne area, the Lötschberg base tunnel and the company BLS Cargo, which is almost market leader on the axle Rotterdam to Genua through Switzerland via Lötschberg-route.
Good video, next can you do Belgium ? it would be a great comparison, two countries roughly the same size, with a strong railway culture, but a... belgian management for one :D would be good if you could then compare the facts and figures between both in the video
UK Next pls! We invented the railways - the first railway line in the world is the Darlington & Stockton Railway which opened in 1825. Also, with our different way of train companies. Origionally, it was lots of little companies. Then grouped into "the big 5". In the 40s, it was nationalised to form British Rail. Privitised in the 1990s to a franchising model. the franchising model was scrapped last year and is now government-owned entities which are operated by private companies
The main reason why riding trains in Switzerland is very easy: all time tables are synchronized, you can change from one train to the other in just a few minutes. Additionally, even though there are different companies you can buy one ticket from start to destination, this can include a bus ride, multiple trains and even entire city public transport.
Also you don't have to plan in before. Just get to a station, open the SBB app and choose where you want to go. It instantly outputs the best route, regarding not only SBB trains but also other train companies as well as bus, tram, ship and even "Bergbahnen" (includes mountain trains e.g. rack railways, cable cars, etc.).
In Switzerland you have to look at the public transport as a complete system. Not just the train. Every Train, every Bus, even the Ships on the lakes are synchronized. This is what really makes the differance. You have nearly no place where you have to wait for a new connection. Switzerland is not about fast train, its about fast connections.
But this is only possible because the Public transport is strongly backed by the population. The swiss goverment invest a load of money into the railway System. In many Countries trains are seen as something nice to have. In Switzerland public transport are seen as essential.
Actually they're not only seen as essential, they indeed are. We just don't have the infrastructure or space to go all cars and trucks.
@@scotty1928 The newest thing is Chargo Sous Terrain. I find the concept really cool
@@unifaeggi me as well. I find it saddening that multiple companies already withdrew from it. It'll be a game changer for sure!
This good connections from local bus to local trains to major railway lines is the basis of the Swiss success. There are quite some countries with excellent long distance lines eg Germany or France, excellent connections between Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin - the difference comes, when you get down from the ICE or TGV: connections are not coordinated and sooner or later you find yourself with some 50 or 90 minutes to spend in some ill-kempt railway station in the middle of nowhere - and the buses to the villages run three times a day, if you're lucky. Like this, private cars are almost mandatory for mobility.
In Switzerland, the coordinated connections feed passengers from everywhere to the main lines - you can travel by train with good connections not only from Zurich to Bern (Intercity) but also from Schlieren to Adelboden (S-Bahn - Intercity - RegioExpress - Postbus)
@@IrmgardWiesner In switzerland we are complaining when connections are missaligned by 15 minutes, or in smaller stations even by 10 minutes ;)
Fun fact: Zurich Station is the 51st busiest railway station in the world. It may not sound impressive but if you remove all the Japanese stations Zurich becomes 6th. What makes it more impressive is that Zurich isn't populated in particular. It has 400k people in city proper and 1.6 million in the metropolitan area.
Thanks for sharing that interesting information
Here is the list when you remove all Japanese stations
1. Gare du Nord (Paris)
2. Taipei
3. Gare de Chatelet (Paris)
4. Roma Termini
5. Hamburg Hauptbahnhof
6. Zürich Hauptbahnhof
I live near zurich( in Winterthur) and for all swiss people zurich is huge. Because theirs no bigger City in switzerland. Its funny to see how small people from other countries think zurich is.
@@kaimuller7819 My city in Japan is Hamamatsu, which has 800,000 people. And barely anybody outside Japan even recognize it lol. To be fair people know the automobile companies that originate there (Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha)
China: Do you forget my station? I don't like being left out 😅
It always fascinates me, that in Switzerland you can get absolutely EVERYWHERE on public transit. There are trains almost everywhere, and even when there is no train, you can still take a bus.
There is a roule in the Swiss law that says, every Vilage with more then 100 peoples has to have a connection to the public transport network. This non profitable connections are payed by the tax.
@@unifaeggi damn that’s a true 1st world country
@@unifaeggi Wow, that would be a game changer here in Spain. My city has 4 small villages under it's control, and I think only one is connected properly, thanks to it being next to a mildly important route. But frequencies are abismal for one of them (buses only tuesdays and thursdays) and none existent to the other two, because they aren't in the middle of any important transport route. They should try to cover it in gulliver buses, if only to make those small villages more part of the city, and maybe also try to connect to the train station, which is very far from the city and impossible to get to without a car or a taxi.
@@signodeinterrogacion8361 I think many counties focused too heavy to the height speed rail. Most counties shorten their Railway network, to cut cost, and build fancy height speed railways.Some years ago I was on a train trip to the Kanton of Fribourg.. The last etape i was on a small local train. There was only a few peoples on bord. But the Train was brand new. The Track was an slow old track who exist for sure over 100 years. But moast of the stations are moderniced only months ago. All accessible for dissabled. In some parts they even have had brand new stations.
So you can ask, why Switzerland invest so much money for a railway track nobody us? The people in this region are used to the car. Many dosen't even know at the time, that this connection exists with a half hour connection. So why waste money for this? The anser is simple.
Only because people dont miss the railway dosent mean the wont use it. You have first to build new connections, and after some years the people start using it. In the end, this connection will help keep the cars out of the city in future.
@@unifaeggi you probably didn’t experience rush hour in the morning and afternoon. Then, most trains are full…
Who knew that a country filled with tall mountains and harsh weather would have one of the best railway systems in the world!
Japan?
@@ABCantonese Switzerland, Japan, Austria..
@@traiver6685 China
@@theTHwa3tes11 If you break it down on a per capita basis, China doesn't even come close. The only reason they end up on top of some statistics is because China is a huge country with a huge population. In my opinion, having a few high quality train lines between large cities just isn't enough to qualify as a "top country".
That being said, there's also freight that people always overlook. This is where Japan's railway system falls way behind other countries, because they barely use it for freight. The problem here is that freight isn't dependent on travel time like passengers are, so one metric is almost entirely defined by the size of the country (Russia, Canada, the USA, Australia all end up at the top). The other metric, that doesn't use distance as much, puts China behind Switzerland and Austria at least per capita.
Of course, you can argue that long railways are also an achievement, which is true, but I don't think it's the same as synchronizing freight and passenger trains on a complex network with high train density.
Weather isn’t too harsh for the most part tho
Unfortunatelly, you did not mentioned the timetable system of Switzerland. In my opinion it is the basis of its punctuality and success.
We agree. Timetable system in Switzerland is indeed special and unique. There will be other opportunities to deal with that topic in the future!
I thought is their great clocks, the basis of its punctuality and success. :))
@David Steger Can you recommend any videos or other resources on it? I'm highly interested.
Funny thing is, as swiss, I am always extremely confused that other countries do not have regular trains every our...
It's the reason for success, yes.
But it's NOT a reason for punctuality! It's actually the other way around: Punctuality is NEEDED for the timetable system to work.
The reasons for the punctuality are more complex: Good infrastructure, especially enough capacity, good planning, good maintenance, enough trains in reserve to replace broken trains, etc.
One thing that shocked about travelling on the Swiss railways was how smooth the trains acceleration was when pulling out of the station. If I had my eyes closed, I almost wouldn't have been able to feel the acceleration. This is a very stark contrast to other countries.
Totally agree, but I feel like this is the case for most long range Services, at least here in Germany. It’s the same for loco-hauled regional trains, other than newer multiple unit trains that can give shorter bursts of acceleration if needed.
@@peterw.8434 interesting, I didn't consider that. I've only been on electric multiple units doing urban transport here in Australia, so it makes sense that an intercity train would be smoother
@@TheCrunchifiedOne That makes sense, our urban rail here in Berlin (S-Bahn) sometimes feels like a rollercoaster, especially the older trains were you literally feel the engine spooling up 😅… But its fine that way, great acceleration is needed as the stations are usually less than ~1,5Km apart.
@@peterw.8434 The moast trains of Switerland can acclerate really fast. but they normally not do it. Only if they are behind the timetable. This has to do with an energy saving strategy of the SBB.
@@unifaeggi I heard trains use the least amount of energy when they get to the top speed fast and then shut of the motor
Some points i'd like to mention:
1) The fast and complete electrification of Swiss Railways strated after WW1 and the shortage of coal caused by the war.
2) The SBB had in the 19-hundrets the policy: "as fast as needed, not as fast as possible" with the idea that all long distance trains in the big station shall arive just before a full hour and leave just after a full hour, so pasangers can change in any direction without a long waitingtime
3)the timetableplaning does include all stages of public transport from long distance trains down to local busses. I regullary use connections like tram, change to tram, change to S-Bahn, change to bus or bus, change to S-Bahn, change to Intercity change to tram and you hardly ever have waitingtimes higher than 5 minutes, even on sundays.
4) you can trust connectins, even if you have just three minutes to change from one train to another, you'll get it in at least nine and a half of ten cases
I feel like it is not mentioned enough how well the trains connect with other public transport. Buses for example always depart after a train arrives, and in the rare case that a train is delayed, the buses will wait for the train to arrive so people don't miss the connection. You don't even need to plan your trip as a local, you just take the train and can be almost 100% sure theres gonna be a bus to take you wherever you need to go that departs at latest 15 minutes after the train arrives.
The public transport is so good that as a person that lives near Zurich, i feel like I often forget to appreciate it. It's basically as reliable as walking...
One honorable mention left out was how the route Zurich-Berne (and vice versa) is so profitable for the company, that it's one of the reasons they lost so much money this year, due to homeoffice
Most Suisse Daily commuter have a general abo so the SBB already earned the money if the train are empty or full doesn’t matter so much then
@@johannesfranck1770 no they made refunds on the GA
@@CityScapesYT And also for the other abos like passepartout or half fare travelcard
@@johannesfranck1770 No, most of them use Halbtax. Also many use public transport only two or three times a week, or instead of the bicycle when it rains, erc. In the case of the Bern-Zürich line there are a lot of GA holders, but they have been refunded if they were in a home office or similar situation.
US - that is what you want. Do not start with TGVs or shinkansen connections - you want to connect within the bigger metro areas like in Switzerland then you think about high speed rail. Connect Chicago and Milwaukee in 30 minutes, not Chicago and Detroit in 4 hours. It's cheaper but employs loads of people and has significant effects from the start.
and you will vastly reduce a lot of the congestion on the road. In switzerland we don't really have an underground in any city, but we have a really tight "s-bahn" network that functions almost like undergrounds. The trains however drive longer distances, so they come into the urban area as a commuter train from the agglomeration and then within the city they (together with trams), work like a traditional underground
@@louissikkema5399 I'm Austrian - may I ask, when do you guys in Switzerland start with S-Bahn? I mean I am living in between Linz and Vienna and we have a sprawl of smaller cities, larger of which around 50.000 inhabitants. To have a network between those would be awesome, but I'm curious, when does regional S-Bahn in Switzerland start (knowing that most Swiss cities do not have millions of inhabitants)
@@TheWoblinGoblin that depends, so the s-bahn is pretty much centered on zürich, but it connects the whole of central switzerland. Then it is complemented by other regional providers, that link their schedules to the zürich s-bahn.
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Bahnen_in_der_Schweiz
This wiki link explains it quite well (also the difference of the zurich s-bahn and the regional trains that are just called s-bahn)
@@TheWoblinGoblin S-Bahn initially was independent from a timetable perspective and focus was only on connecting suburbs to centers/downtown but meanwhile, whether it is S-Bahn, regional commuter, inter regio or intercity, all that matters is that they have a high frequency and the timetable is highly integrated to all other public transport systems.
@@hansmuster4299 yeah, I know the Sbahn concept very well from Vienna. I am living in a regional center about 100 km away, so we have about 30 min connections to Vienna. Now we are - internationally speaking very small with about 50.000 people but a good SBahn would easily connect about 50 - 80.000 more, and those would have a fast connection to Vienna (a 1h commute would be better than now by car). Knowing that Switzerland connects smaller cities I was just curious if there are use cases like that in Switzerland. I have to read up on wikipedia, couldn't yet
As a swissguy, I was often surprised how bad railways in other countries are.
Until I realized how spoiled I am
As a czech guy living in switzerland I can assure you you were right on both statements. Swiss is very good and other countries are bad :D
Yeah ! When you see how others courntries' railways are, you tend to complain less about delays in Switzerland xD
For that reason, Switzerland cooperates with Indonesian railway companies to market their products to Asia Pacific and Southeast Asia
I live in the Netherlands, we are spoiled here too so when I went to Italy I was shocked when there was a 10 minute delay lol
In Germany you are happy if the train is even coming
Really cool video! Btw, another Swiss railway company that is worth saying is the RhB (Rhätische Bahn). They have a railway network in the canton of Graubünden in southern Switzerland. They're really famous for their Unesco world heritage routes: the Bernina line and the Albula line with the impressive Landwasser viaduct.
Would be cool if one of the next videos could be about the Norwegian or Swedish railways.
Keep up your good work! :)
Yes, exactly. Unfortunately, it is impossible to cover all important aspects in a single video. PS. thanks for proposals!
Also seem to have missed any mention of BLS , which also has significant cross border goods traffic?
I find it funny that Swiss mountain railways (including the RhB) have more modern trains than US cities. Just Google "RhB Capricorn" and you'll see what I mean.
@@lukasegeling5205 i really don't like how they look. I loved the allegra and they should've kept the design language. It's just the same with the zb adler and fink: they're extremely ugly, especially so compared to the spatz...
+1 for Norge
Very good. I think however, that one very important fact that boosted the Swiss Railways, was the introduction of the Bahn2000 concept in the early 1990s, defining the timetables completely new, introducing the concept of the Taktfahrplan. This was the major boost to make timetables easy and predictable, transfer connections at major hubs shorter, and all public transport is integrated into that concept, also local bus lines, etc. have their timetables aligned to make optimal transfers. And not to forget that we invested significant amounts into upgrading the railway tracks, making faster connections, new bypasses, etc. to increase passenger throughput in the last 30 years.
One interesting point worth mentioning: Stadler, the company SBB ordered their new trains from, is a Swiss company, too. Which helps secure my workplace, I am writing software for a company whose biggest customer is Stadler.
and Stadler is the biggest costumer of Baumer Electric AG witch is also a swiss Company producing high precision Sensors
I love Stadler trains, I live near Zurich and I always appreciate riding a Stadler train more than the others, don't really understand why they aren't more renouned internationally and why the SBB don't just buy all trains from them. They feel really spacious and the ride is very comfortable, and from what Ive heard Stadler is quite precise with their delivery dates and the trains are reliable, unlike those new tilting ones from Bombardier...
One omission made in this video that I find very curious: Switzerlands extensive narrow gauge network. Most of which has nothing to do with the federal railways, and never have. IMHO the story about Swiss railways becomes very incomplete without delving into this large chunk of the countrys rail system (The RhB covers virtually all of Graubunden on their own, for example...).
Another important point about the Swiss railways system is the huge number of viaducts and tunnels (including spiral tunnels) because a large part of the country is montainous.
Another point : many regional lines use narrow metric lines (around 1,400 km overall).
There are no new high speed lines, but tilt trains are used on some lines for faster speed.
You can find on UA-cam many videos shot from the train driver's cabin in Switzerland, some of them are very spectacular.
As I live in Switzerland I am absolutely fascinated with the railway system andlearningg about all the new train routes, plans etc and thehistoryy and this video explains a lot of it thank you so much!
I take the Swiss train everyday coming from Geneva’s border country town in France and I must say this video was very informative ! Well done ! Never stop with these incredible video’s !
Switzerland and Japan are both the top railway countries in the world IMO. No other countries even come close.
Haven you been to Singapore? It is better than those 2 countries.
@@tawansrithrachaikul4573 yes I have, and I strongly disagree. First Singapore is a city state and therefore doesn’t have proper trains . They’re basically all metros.
Second the Singapore MRT have hard plastic seats (Switzerland and Japan have cushy cloth or velour seats) and boring designs for the trains both inside and outside.
@@AlohaBiatch Hard plastic seats are way better than cushy cloth because it is much easier to clean and way more hygienic. Do you like to sit in a seat that got absorbed by someone else’s sweat? Or perhaps someone spilled sth and it dried? Probably not.
U. Ever been to china ? Do more research don’t be ignorant
@@tawansrithrachaikul4573 Ive never seen a dirty seat in my 11 years living in Switzerland. The trains are always extremely clean. They clean them once every few hours (they have people in bright orange outfits going in and cleaning up at terminus stations). Why would I want to break my back on a plastic seat.
After watching your video on the Dutch system first, I think that the Swiss system should be looked at again in greater detail. I have been impressed that the Swiss have chosen to place a higher degree of importance on the inter-connectedness of their trains than speed. So when you get into a station and need to connect with another train, even a local train, the time between trains is short, and often its just as easy as a cross platform walk. Not only does this apply to the large stations but even down to the third tier stations. Even a point to point ride that involves 2 or 3 transfers can generally be done seamlessly with little sense of lost time. I'm guessing it also connects with private and postal buses. They seemed to have designed a system that works for much of the whole country, not just the heavy traffic cities. All done in a country of 8M people and which is largely mountainess. I would be glad to let the Swiss take over Amtrak in the east. They could probably do twice as much as the do nothings at Amtrak.
But what I like the most is that while you have different railway operators you only have one ticket that works for and they are also timed together. For example you could travel from montreux to Zug with 4 different railway companys (MOB, BLS, ZB, SBB) but you only need one ticket for it.
My experience of Swiss railway in 2008 was so impressive I still talk about it.
One of the best in the world.
Thank you for this amazing video! Could you make a video talking about the Dutch railways? It connects major and minor cities across the country and means short travel times between cities.
The commercials were very well-placed, occurring at natural breaking points in the video. In my experience, this is unusual with UA-cam. I appreciated it.
Switzerland is the best! Extreme punctuality, great comfort, service, interchange options to local public transport. Absolutely the nr 1. After Switzerland Japan is 2nd. And then there are different options for #3. In my country the Netherlands some aspects are comparable to Switzerland like service frequency (even better in NL), vertical integration, timetable consistency and hybrid system (state and private railways). But Dutch rail is lacking on punctuality, is fragile in rather normal winter weather, no dedicated surburban rail, no rail catering and some other issues.
Your trains go more often than every 30 minutes on intercity lines?
Timetable to remember only by the minute of departure because it’s the same every hour at the same platform ? One ticket for all transport you need,Train-Tram-Bus-Metro-Ship-Funicular-Cable Cars-Rack Rail ?
Do you think the SBB is the only operator?
A one year general ticket for all sorts of transport for the salary of one month?
Intercity lines between major cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Arnhem, Zwolle: every 10-15 minutes. Timetable minute of departure always the same: yes, since 1938 nationwide, earlier than in Switzerland. One ticket for all transport: yes, for intercity, local trains, buses, metro, trams there is the OV-card. But in terms of punctuality, service and comfort Switzerland is clearly superior. And yes, I know, I have been in Switzerland many times :)
@@tammo100 Switherland picked the time table modell from the Netherlands. the only thing they changed was, that they used it on all Public transport
@@aoilpe what „salary of one month“ are you talking? Are you talking about the salary a student gets with a job with no qualifications?
Because otherwise, GA/HT are still unbeaten in cost/km ratio compared to any other offering in any other country
@@jimi272If you mean a 100% job :
Yes
And it’s for ALL sorts of Transportation!
Not just trains and buses...ALL of them ! All times - everywhere - one full year !
If more than 1 million citizens travel with the GA ,out of 8,5 millions, shows the success of it...
Brilliant video. Always been fascinated by the Swiss railways. The key points for me were - 100% electrified, makes a profit (Covid years not counted), that the whole public transport system is integrated and synchronised, overcome considerable geographic challenges (namely mountains
I was born in Switzerland and live in Switzerland. It is the best place in the world for public transportion, they apologize for 3 minutes delay here. In my opinion you really don't need a car here.
I think Japan's train network is as good as Switzerland's.
@@benedettobruno1669 yeah of course Japan is something different, I forgot them
One thing is not mentioned : the price of the tickets . Yes you can get cheap low ones, but at odd hours ,non refundable
I mean yes but everyone can afford it
Still cheaper than using the car, that's how it should be you should have a good but affordable public transport system which garanties you a better and cheaper transportation than a car. Should not this is be one of the priorities of an government and not make war?
The image at 14:03 was the railway station of Biel, not Bern.
You mean Bienne ?
@0nion biel is the german name and bienne the french one - so same same
The official name of the city is bilingual Biel/Bienne and that's also on the station signs.
I know guys. Was just kidding.
Ach, ces romands, touschour rigol !
@@thechilledonion9313 I got it, don't worry xD
I think you missed some major reasons why the Swiss transportation system is so good from a global perspective. It is clearly not because of the speed of the trains, low prices, or an exceptional level of comfort. Punctuality is one of the reasons, true, but more important is the fact that services run very frequently, on fixed intervals (e.g. exactly every 30 minutes), have short but seamless connections with both other train services and with local transportation (e.g. buses), that there is a unified ticketing system allowing you to travel fully flexibly (you also never need reservations)... These things explain why so many people use trains in Switzerland for their daily commutes, which is perhaps not uncommon in the rest of (Western) Europe, but is unseen in most other parts of the world.
Another important point is the massive investement made..for lines, infrastructures and rolling stock..i have read that is the higher Yearly per capita in the world
Next Austria or Netherlands, please. Their railways are great! I think, rail systems in Switzerland, Austria and Netherlands are the best in Europe. After them are Germany, France and Britain of course.
Britain 🤣
Spain puts the Uk to shame.
I think that when the Swiss railway networks went full 100% electric, it also meant way lower air pollution. Though not completely free of it, hence the institution of several truck on flat car operations, necessary to improve the air quality in Alpine valleys that are *HIGHLY* sensitive to air pollution.
Being electric doesn't necessarily mean it's clean, for example trains in Poland are electric but the electricity comes from coal.
In Switzerland the electricity for trains comes mostly (if not totally) from dams that are actually owned by SBB so yes, you are right in saying it's clean or cleaner.
@@notproplayer3649
When Swiss railways went electrical close to all electricity in Switzerland was produced by hydroelectric power plants. SBB owns and operates even their owen hydroelectric power plants including artificial lakes (even pump storage power plant).
At the moment 90% of the electric power is from hydroelectric power plants, the remaining 10% from nuclear.
But one detail: when railway enthusiast reopened the Furka mountain pass line (abandoned when Furka base tunnel was opened in 1982) they gave up the idea of rebuilding the electric power systems (to expensive, especially as trains were not planned to run in winter any more). So they use now historic steam locomotives (even recovered from Vietnam where they were sold almost 100 years ago) and diesel powered also old locomotives. More at www.dfb.ch
Excellent video guys! We want this kind of video for every world country, A to Z!
America because it’s basically the exact opposite of everything you said about Switzerland’s rail system at 1:00
Check out this video we made about American Railways --------> ua-cam.com/video/hU5rJz8Tr5k/v-deo.html
A major fact for the success of railway in Switzerland is the geology. Half of the country is located within the alps. Trains use tunnels since they were invented, because they can't go up steep hills. (Well apart from the cogwheel trains, but that's a subject for another video) Therefore, in many cases it is faster taking a train rather than the car, which takes hours either to drive around a mountain or winding roads above them. And in Winter, lots of snow will lead to road closures.
I had assumed that the Swiss railway system was fully nationalized, so I'm amazed that so many different companies operate it so smoothly and efficiently. I live in the US, and I'm jealous.
You have good reason to be jealous...
The system works so well because of the “Timetable Commission” who’s working for all transport companies...
Well, they are private Companies, but moast of them are fully owned by the goverment. So the goverment has basically full controll on this Companies. Only on the fright trains are fully private companies around. But in differance to US the passenger trains have the big market. Also the passenger trains have in europe the hight priority, where in US and Kanada the fright trains has the hight priority. US Train system is simply anymore designed for passenger trains. There are a few exeptions, but there is anymore a working Rail Network like in Europe.
Fantastic video! Cheers from Switzerland!
Thanks 🙂
Holland next. Another dynamic European nation with a top national railway network connecting every part of the country as well as the Schiphol airport, and with also international high-speed links
In My opinion Switzerland has the single best rail network in the world and I've stuck by that decision for months
Brazil... Despite it basically not having intercity passenger trains anymore, I think it would be interesting to look at the history and the cargo market.
This video is awesome shoing the facts about the swiss rail network and SBB in general. However at 14:04 you‘re not showing Bern Central station but rather it‘s the Station Biel/Bienne which is in deed in the canton of Bern. Otherwise keep up the good work. Would love to see you focusing on German, french and U.S. rail network in the upcoming videos.
Amazing video!
I'd say, It would be interesting to make video on:Australia, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Japan, Taiwan, Czechia and South Korea.
SOB is the company in my home region where I live and as im writing this is im on a SOB flirt rn lol
There's a lot of very interesting information given, particularly on the history. However, I have the impression that the video gives a quite distorted picture of the overall situation. A viewer without any background knowledge about the Swiss public transport system may get the impression that "railway in Switzerland" is basically the SBB, the SOB (which is by far not the biggest railroad company in Switzerland besides the SBB), and some "intruders" from neighboring countries (DB, ÖBB, TGV Lyria). But what about companies like the BLS, and the entire narrow-gauge network (with the RhB as the largest player, with almost 400 km of tracks alone), which make the remote mountainous regions easily accessible? To me, the major features of Swiss public transport are the unified and harmonized tariff, which allows you to travel the entire country (across all its railroad and other public transport companies) with one single ticket - something they sadly don't even get managed in Germany - and the integrated "clock" timetable, which allows for frequent - at least hourly - and smooth connections between any two points via the hub stations throughout the country (that is, as long as there's no major disturbance, which definitely happens from time to time). Another point worth mentioning is that Switzerland has the world's highest railroad density *despite* the fact that at least 50 % of the country are not really suitable for building infrastructure. All this information I would have expected in such a video documentary...
It's even funnier when you use the SBB Mobile App. It will send you notifications with the same jingle at the stations and it nearly perfectly matches it on time. 👌🏼
I like this serie, because I am a Dutch citizen, I would love to see an episode of Dutch railways
I think Italy would be a pretty nice railway system to talk about, it's quite peculiar and interesting.
Wow, just the fact that all almost all showed footage was really form Switzerland makes this an extremely well made video. Well researched and presented. Thank you
How funny that I‘m watching this video right now while sitting in a swiss train on the way to the university 🙂
You said nothing about the rail gauges of Switzerland.
Me when I suddenly see a clip of the small city I live in in a random yt video about the whole of switzerland: "A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one"
My SBB insiders tell me, that behind the scenes, tension is huge. The "Rollmaterial" the trains, waggons etc. is highly used and so is the personal. There is shortage on personel too. But like my fellow countrymen already wrote: the public transportation system is just awesome most of the time. I love it. In over fourty years I have only used the "ÖV" (Öffentlicher Verkehr - Public Transportation) and no car.
I remember a saying from my grand-father, I am Swiss and he is too:
"If Switzerland never had her trains, we would be all fired at work."
I have experienced the railways of at least 50 different countries on 3 continents. The Swiss railway system is not the best in the world, it is in a class of its own.
N.B.: I have not been to Japan... so I reserve my opinion on that system!
First of all I want to congratulate you on the excellent content you offer on this channel, svaka ti cast! This is the first video I watched and it will definitely not be the last one :-)
Being originally from Morocco and having lived in the Balkans, I would love to see videos about the railway systems of these two!
Morocco! Since it's the only african country with an HSR + Africa isn't Mentionned so it would be very cool for us Africans
Oh that iconic Swiss rail station clock … !!
Nice video, can you do taiwan next please?
Malaysia: East Coast Rail Link Project
It is one of the biggest infrastructure project in the country that connects Port Klang on the Straits of Malacca to Kota Bharu in northeast Peninsular Malaysia, connecting the East Coast Economic Region states of Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan to one another, and to the Central Region of the Peninsular's west coast.
Could you please make a video next time about the railways in Czechia containing current problems, service quality, inspector institutions and share of private railway companies? Thank you.
@@jakubjoachim8029 No worries. English is not my mother tongue neither :) I wonder the reason behind this phenomena. Would you mind giving me more details about it? I mean is it because of insufficient quality in operations management or capacity overload or sth else? Thank you.
I am working for the SBB CFF FFS and love my job.😊
Very good work!
Next Austria pls
After Switzerland, the second best system in Europe
Nur auf der Westbahnstrecke, und nur wenn man daran wohnt, LG von der Mariazellerbahn ;) trotzdem ein Like!
Austria is a mixed case, some lines lost most or all of their traffic or have disappeared alltogether (Erzberg, Lavanttal, Gesäuse etc). Certainly service on some lines is great, though it would be even better to have hourly service throughout and not as it is a mix of one and two hour rhythms. So if you take Switzerland as best practice Austria still has a way to go.
@@uncinarynin
For sure !
We have 30 minutes rhythm on some national lines in Switzerland....
Recording to the latest RPI (rail performance index, from 2017) the order is: swiss, denmark, finnland, germany, austria, sweden, france. These are also the only European rail systems in tier 1 quality level.
@@canuzzi knowing the German system, i would bei very Interested to know what they actually measure (e.g. I Always thought the Italian system to be more reliable - at least in the Emilia Romagna)
Came for the trains. Did not expect to see my old apartment in the video.
Le gros avantage des trains suisses, c'est le cadencement + les correspondances
Could you explain why motorails aren't more popular? It sounds like a good idea to me: drive your car onto a train, go to sleep, and the next day you're in another country. I guess most people preferred to drive themselves or rent a car at the destination, but with limited-distance electric cars becoming more popular, motorails could be a solution to go over a larger distance while charging your car. Compared to renting, there'd be less hassle and you have less luggage hauling to do.
Tbh we swiss like to complain that they are never on time but tbh they nearly always are and if the train does not come the next one is here in like 30mins
Great video with a ton of interesting and useful information. Well done!
You ommited or forgot to discuss the national ""Taktfahrplan" (national timetable), imho. Switzerland is the only country in the world that has such a nationally syncronized timetable between ALL modes of public transport across an entire nation. This should be the content of a whole video by itself, as the german government has finally understood the importance of such a national timetable and wants to create a "light" version to improve its services, as a full version seems out of reach for the country and prohibitively epensive. Switzerland took more than 30 years to impement this national system!
I am proud to work for Swiss railways
There is no place in Switzerland which cannot be reached by public transport, be it by rail, bus or cable car!
The UK, it has so many different railway systems plus London, Londons railway infrastructure is more interesting than most countries.
Switzerland felt like a fairytale when I went there. France and Germany also had chad railways networks. If you wanted to talk about another great railway network you could perhaps talk about Japan's.
WOW fantastic review ... I learned a lot about about the railway in my own country :-) Well done mate
Great video! I would love to see Greece next or at some point in the future!
Hahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahah
This aged well
(Greece has no good railway i am not trying to be offensive to the victims)
To compare the number of trains to a bigger country: Germany (DB) has about 40‘000 trains per day but is 10 times bigger population wise.
Next one: Austria, as it has a similar Geography as Switzerland
But not so good😉👏
@@juliuscaesar5270 The Austrian Oil Industry's lobby is too powerful, to let the OBB allow to come even closer to the Swiss system
Austria doesn't really have a similar geography as switzerland. Tirol and Vorarlberg maybe, but not the rest
insert Östreicherwitz
Greetings from Switzerland.
I'm starting to believe Swiss is peak developed country
You should make a video about Greek Railways, and the SIGNIFICANT changes in the past 2 decades (with more to come), because it is a very under-reported rail system
It would be interesting to hear about greek railways! 👍🤔🙂
Sry to correct you, but Monaco and Vatican City have a more dense railway network.
Can't wait to see INDIA in this series because of its massive railroad network one of the largest in the world
The timetable that always allows you to go everywhere every 30mins is also a world’s first
Great video. I would like to see comparisons when you show us data. It is difficult to grasp some of the data without it. Thanks for uploading, i enjoyed it very much.
👍Super Video👍Thumbs Up!👍
Best greetings from Switzerland
Thank you 🙂
Switzerland is an interesting case because unlike other European countries, there was not one important national railway and a few local branch lines ("private" or owned by communities), but a number of different companies operating through traffic, even international traffic.
One of those not explicitly mentioned in the video is the BLS (Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon) which opened one of the important Alpine crossings in 1913, electrified from the beginning, and today also includes lines that were consolidated into Regionalverkehr Mittelland in the 1990s. After an agreement with SBB they took over most of the commuter services around Bern and some around Luzern, while SBB operates intercity trains over the BLS lines. BLS Cargo international operates freight trains throughout Europe. BLS also operates the new Lötschberg base tunnel since 2007.
And there is an important meter gauge network in the south and southeast of the country, especially the Rhätische Bahn in the southeast, connecting to the matterhorn gotthard bahn crossing over into the southwest. Besides operating famous tourist trains like the Glacier-Express and Bernina-Express, RhB also provides important local passenger and freight transportation in its area.
Thank you for these explanations! We agree that we could mentioned BLS and present the situation with narrow gauges in Switzerland, however, we tried to be as concise as possible. There will be another opportunities to deal with those topics!
@@RailwaysExplained Thanks, and I'm looking forward to Switzerland part two video.
@@uncinarynin Ye the rhaetische bahn is great, always impressive when going to the mountains to see what kind of terain they have to deal with and how well used those tracks are, for passengers as for cargo.
The Electricity used by SBB are provided by it’s Dam
Gotta love Switzerland ❤
I would love to see a video about Serbia. There is a project connecting 2 biggest cities and plans to connect the 3 biggest and then to neighboring coutries which is all along the European corridor 10 and part of Chinas Belt and Road project. It is not really high speed, it will go 200km/h but it is a huge change for the country considering the previous speeds.
Serbia is also selling itself to China?
@@aoilpe Yea... they have the money and are willing to invest in Serbia which is what it needs right now to grow. There is so much happening, the country is really chainging, new companies are coming and opening their factories, there are many roads and highways being built and if we waitied for the EU none of that would still be happening. I really love the EU but they are really slow, it feels like they dont really care about us, and now that people see that we dont need to wait for them to help us, that we can do it with the help of China there is less people that want to join the EU.
Been to Switzerland many times and travelled on its amazing train service the best in the world our trains in Wales are awful late cancelled and over crowded really poor service
Living there can confirm
Do Denmark next! There’s almost no videos about the Danish railway on UA-cam!
According to their website BLS Cargo had a 30% market share in trans-alpine railfreight in Switzerland in 2018.
This video was very helpful thank you.
Not many people give facts and figures on UA-cam.
Second largest traincompany in Switzerland is BLS from Berne, which operates local services in Berne area, the Lötschberg base tunnel and the company BLS Cargo, which is almost market leader on the axle Rotterdam to Genua through Switzerland via Lötschberg-route.
Good video, next can you do Belgium ? it would be a great comparison, two countries roughly the same size, with a strong railway culture, but a... belgian management for one :D would be good if you could then compare the facts and figures between both in the video
also two countries whose trains need to switch language between regions!
Great video, just one small remark: The picture you used for the railway station in Bern is actually the station in Biel.
I'd do Ceske Drahy next. I've heard good things of them.
Thanks for this explanation of my country..
Whats also interesting that 1000km are narrow gauge Railways, which are not operated by SBB (except Zentralbahn)
UK Next pls!
We invented the railways - the first railway line in the world is the Darlington & Stockton Railway which opened in 1825. Also, with our different way of train companies. Origionally, it was lots of little companies. Then grouped into "the big 5". In the 40s, it was nationalised to form British Rail. Privitised in the 1990s to a franchising model.
the franchising model was scrapped last year and is now government-owned entities which are operated by private companies
a nice and informative video; just one hint: the station shown at 14:02 is Biel/Bienne and not Bern (as suggested by the commentary).
The main reason why riding trains in Switzerland is very easy:
all time tables are synchronized, you can change from one train to the other in just a few minutes. Additionally, even though there are different companies you can buy one ticket from start to destination, this can include a bus ride, multiple trains and even entire city public transport.
Also you don't have to plan in before. Just get to a station, open the SBB app and choose where you want to go. It instantly outputs the best route, regarding not only SBB trains but also other train companies as well as bus, tram, ship and even "Bergbahnen" (includes mountain trains e.g. rack railways, cable cars, etc.).