Comment by tempay
6 days ago
It's not simple with the "clock-face scheduling" system which is used which times the trains to all meet at the big nodes (Zürich, Bern, Basel) so connections work. To achieve this trains are supposed to fit into 30/60/120 minute beats which synchronise the entire system. See [1,2] for how this works.
Also many of the most important parts of the system are at capacity. Bigger trains can help but a lot of these gains have already been realised in the crowded areas. The current hope is digitalising signaling to allow density to be increased but that's not simple/cheap even if it's cheaper than working on the lines themselves.
I'm not saying this is wrong, that makes a lot of sense. But on the other hand why have I never heard of other, much more dense countries facing this problem? I just never hear of Japan, China, Germany, Taiwan, etc seeing overcrowded trains and raise their hands saying "there can't possibly be a solution!"
Germany's passenger rail is notoriously failing. China is big and empty compared to Switzerland so there's lots of room to build. Japan's population is stagnant, and so train use might be stagnant too. (No idea about Taiwan.)
What does it have to do with they way they have to manage way higher population density? Singapore is 2/3 Swiss population on 1/3 of the Canton of Vaud.. They are 18 Chinese cities with a population over 10 million.
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> Japan's population is stagnant, and so train use might be stagnant too. (No idea about Taiwan.)
Japan's number of tourists has famously exploded over the last decade, and they take trains more than the resident population.
Yeah there's tons of work ongoing. Lots of line close to the big hubs have ongoing construction to eventually switch to 15min takt.
Improvements on various train station (new underground stations in Geneva and Luzern, extra platforms, etc.).
https://company.sbb.ch/en/railway-development/future-rail/na...
(for example, there's also lots of tram, etc. projects)
It's not impossible, but Switzerland's geography means tunneling is involved in adding capacity which makes it very expensive. Also the beautiful synchronisation of a country-wide integrated timetable where you can reliably get between any two places in the country with connections that always make sense is a point of national pride.
Japan, Taiwan and China all added dedicated infrastructure which took a long time and cost a fortune (vs the shared tracks currently used for intercity/regional/European freight). Tokyo accepts famously absurd levels of overcrowding during peak hours. Deutsche Bahn in Germany is widely thought of a joke due to chronic underinvestment meaning on-time trains are surprising.
That said, these technical concerns have nothing to do with the 10 million proposal. It's worth asking why a camp that spent decades opposing sustainability legislation has suddenly discovered the word now that it can be pointed at immigration.
I have visited India, and if you ever travel on a train in Mumbai, you will understand what overpopulation really means. Your body will be pressed against other people’s bodies. To get on the train, you have to learn how to do gymnastics. They are absolutely not managing crowd better.
Nonsense. Rail 2035 is already planning on moving to 15min frequency. That increases capacity and makes connectivity better. 30 minute beats are not a law of nature. That's already planned for on the most important lines and could be done for more lines as well. Clearly you have not even spent 5min researching Swiss rail policy. Switzerland literally planning rail policy 20+ years ahead of time.
Rail 2050 plan has many improvements beyond that, and is still in discussion, and we could have many more if politicians were not afraid of large projects. And if parties like SVP would endlessly prevent good projects and instead want more money spend on idiotic highway expansions.
We literally just voted on blocking highway expansion only for the SVP to say 'sure we voted but all these projects should go ahead anyway'. Fucking insane.
They are blaming immigration for the problems their policy causes.
I could continue and give you a long list of bad choices they make that literally make everything worse, only for them to blame immigration. All the buses are full, but we wont allow any bus lanes to exist because car drivers need priority. City is full of cars but can't have people on bikes and use less space because that could mean subsidized parking would go away in a city where few people own cars. The list goes on and on.
Our problems are dumb polices, not immigration. These polices would be fucking dumb even if we did not have migration.