Are These the Best Railways in the World?

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- Today we start a new series of videos on Railways Explained. The idea is to talk about different railway systems of different countries around the world!

This means we will be presenting the main characteristics of certain railway systems, including some history, some discussion about the market and network structure, dominant rail companies present on the market, main types of goods that are being transported, main corridors, traffic performance and safety indicators, and many other cool and, for all rail lovers, interesting stuff.

The first country on our list is Switzerland.

If you are wondering why Switzerland, reasons are many. But, let’s mention only a few hints. Switzerland is among the top rail systems in Europe in terms of intensity of traffic, network usage, service quality, punctuality, and passenger rail culture in general!

In addition, it maintains strong safety scores all the time, highest technical standards and its railway network is 100% electrified. Simply put, Switzerland’s railways are among the best examples of how the modern rail system should look and also how it should be used by modern society.

For the whole story, check out our video!

- If you enjoyed this video, SHARE it with your rail-loving friends to help us raise our community, and of course, leave your opinion in the COMMENT section and hit the LIKE button.
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#Railways #Switzerland​ #Trains

[georgobergfell]

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.

[hamanakohamaneko]

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.

[unifaeggi]

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.

[traiver]

Who knew that a country filled with tall mountains and harsh weather would have one of the best railway systems in the world!

[TheCrunchifiedOne]

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.

[marcor]

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

[davidsteger]

Unfortunatelly, you did not mentioned the timetable system of Switzerland. In my opinion it is the basis of its punctuality and success.

[playerprime]

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

[TheWoblinGoblin]

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.

[thetute]

As a swissguy, I was often surprised how bad railways in other countries are.
Until I realized how spoiled I am

[pschweiz]

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.

[Senozzz]

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! :)

[eljanrimsa]

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.

[Innerspace]

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...).

[finn]

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!

[cf]

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 !

[Dipar]

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 Youtube many videos shot from the train driver's cabin in Switzerland, some of them are very spectacular.

[AlohaBiatch]

Switzerland and Japan are both the top railway countries in the world IMO. No other countries even come close.

[iyxec]

My experience of Swiss railway in 2008 was so impressive I still talk about it.

One of the best in the world.

[shopshop]

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.