The Most Unexpected Place You'll Find a Metro | Lausanne Metro

Lausanne might seem like your average Swiss city - old buildings, hills, and beautiful nature, but what you might not expect it to have is a fully-automated metro line, which itself was converted from the much older transport mode of funicular transit. Let's take a closer look together!

Special thanks to Adrien & Kurt for helping out with this video!

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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

#switzerland #lausanne #metro

[RMTransit]

Lausanne also has plans for an M3 Line and also has a high quality suburban line known as the LEB which connects to Metro underground at Lausanne’s main station!

[cco]

70K/day for the population of that area and the size of the system is impressive. It's close to the LA Metro at 74K/day.

[Botruc]

When I saw the thumbnail, I thought 'Well, that's weird, looks like Lausanne...". So happy you covered Lausanne's 'metro' system! It's a very popular mode of transportation! At rush hour, it's always packed. I think they are thinking of making a M3 line at some point now.

[Mergatroid]

The Lausanne M2 has more daily riders on average than Chicago's Brown Line did in 2019. That's a LOT considering the Brown Line is the 3rd busiest route in a city of 2.7 million.

[robkilo]

The then-still-quite-new M1 (although it hadn't been named that yet, it was known as the TSOL) became a bit of a transit life-saver one summer in the early/mid 90s when a chemical tanker train derailed in the western station throat of Lausanne. The risk of explosion shut the main line for days (and caused the evacuation of surrounding buildings as I recall), and all trains to and from Geneva had to terminate at Renens. Passengers for Lausanne, and Sion, Brig, and the Simplon line to Italy beyond, could change at Renens and hop on the TSOL to get to Lausanne itself. That was the first time I ever rode the line.

[limesaviation]

Found myself in Lausanne this summer when our Swiss friends wanted to take their boat out for a spin on Lake Geneva. Was extremely surprised when walking around the city and seeing a metro sign. I just had to go take a ride and I was surprised how much it reminded me of the Rennes metro Line A

[threesixninesix]

Please please please do a video on the railway and the other systems in the Montreux area all the way to Blonay. It’s an agglomeration of small picturesque towns climbing upon steep hills criss crossed by funiculars and rack railways seemingly very well connected. It’s like a miniature metropolitan area with a miniature metro system. It’s dense and quirky, a very fine example of Swiss railways excellence.

[joachimk]

The M1 line at peak hours have frequencies up to every 5 minutes, even though the line is almost only single track (even not every station is double track).

[koekeritisVideos]

I live in a city (Utrecht) that is basically of the same size and population as the urban area of Laussanne, and we have a lightrail network of similair size to this metro network, but it gets not even a third of the ridership. These numbers are impressive!

[jsleinonen]

This reminds me, it would be cool to see a video of different transit ticketing systems. Because one great thing that Switzerland's public transport system has that's kind of under the radar is the nationally integrated ticketing system. As a foreigner in Switzerland this has been one of the most impressive parts of it.

For example, I recently traveled from my local bus stop in southern Switzerland to a metro stop on Lausanne's M1 line. All I needed to do for tickets was to type in the name of my bus stop as the origin and the name of the metro stop as the destination into the SBB (Swiss federal railways) app. It then sold me a single ticket that was valid for a bus ride to my local train station, a train to a station where long-distance trains stop, two long-distance trains, and finally the trip on the Lausanne Metro.

You can also buy tickets to many boats and even some ski lifts from the app! Also, there are no fare gates almost anywhere - tickets are checked only on an inspection basis, which makes getting on the trains incredibly convenient.

[coppegaard]

As others have pointed out, the M1 used to be called the TSOL (Tramway du Sud Ouest Lausannois). It was renamed when the M2 opened. The TSOL was built out of necessity as Lausanne is a city with 140k inhabitants but has both the EPFL (federal) and UNIL (cantonal) schools which outgrew their premises and decided to relocate in a field out of town. Initially, city planners tried to absorb the need of transport with many bus lines. That's why EPFL was built around a central alley with large bus stops. However, they quickly understood that this would not scale as there are more than 25k students attending the 2 schools today. A light train line was identified as a potential solution but the reason it is single lane with many level crossings is due to the Swiss democratic process. Such "large" infrastructure projects are often submitted to the popular vote. Therefore, to increase the chances for being accepted the costs were kept to the minimum. Thanks to optimised placement of the passing loops, they were able to keep the frequency at 5 min during peak hours though. As many things in Switzerland, the metro system was the result of a long series of compromises.

[sans_hw]

I love this city, it has everything of an important metropolis while being in fact quite small, the metro, the urbanity, the nightlife (good for its size), of course the lake and the mountains nearby, so glad to study there !
Vive Lausanne et la Suisse

[outcaked]

The moment I saw the thumbnail I already knew what city you were talking about. Lausanne is such a beautiful city with great public transport.

[duchessnoor]

Hi, I’m currently living in Lausanne and I take the metro along my way to and from my school. It’s indeed very small like you said, and usually everything is quite efficient. I like the metro as due to a small city like Lausanne, going in between stations is relatively quick. Though, it can be very claustrophobic! Generally, it’s just the metro to me! Funny to see a video about where I am living and about a general aspect of my life!

[andreagoglio]

I live in Brescia, a City in Italy that has a population of around and has a single line metro (although it will be integrated with trams in the future) While it didn't beat any ridership records, it was a relatively colossal Investment in trying to cure the city's chronic addition to cars. So in a sense I think even small cities should be ready to invest in good transport even if not really profitable.

[truthseeker]

Lausnne is my favorite city of Switzerland; with or without "metro".

[YetAnotherGeorgeth]

I don’t know if you have done a video on it, but another small city with a metro line to look at is the Lille metro. It has two lines that are fully automated, which work really well…when it works at all! I visited the city a few years back and it was one of the more interesting aspects of the city.

[icecycle]

I was in Lausanne with my family, we rode the metro, and it was a nice experience! Every station had a unique sound!

[reneprogin]

That's fun, following your channel for some time and seeing you cover the "metro" I take every day to work. :) Nice overview by the way. A third line is beeing planned, and even if construction has been delayed somewhat, a line M3 will serve the north-west area of town.

[nicolasblume]

could you do a video about CEVA rail in Geneva, and the "voie verte" above it? its a pretty insane project: Part of the existing rail line was moved into a shallow cut-and-cover tunnel, and they build a bikepath+pedestrian path above it, which would have not been possible without the tunnel. It also connects a former isolated railline to the east directly with geneva main station, like a RER line