Why Swiss Trains are the Best in Europe

this video is sponsored by curiosity stream and nebula which is possibly the best bundle deal in video streaming but more about that later i live in the netherlands where we have some pretty good trains there's a dense network that connects nearly all major towns and cities the busiest train station utrech central has over a thousand train departures per day and there are also high speed trains to neighboring countries for example i can go to paris in less than three and a half hours but as good as we have it here in the netherlands there's another country in europe that does trains better much better in fact welcome to the confederacio helvetica or as i like to call it switzerland famous for mountains holy cheese chocolate bending hives and time bracelets and of course trains lots and lots of trains now i've been to switzerland many times and i've taken the train every time i've come because of course i did it's the most efficient way to get around but recently i stayed a full week in switzerland and took multiple trains per day to find out what makes these trains the best trains in europe one of the things that really sets the train system apart in switzerland is just how extensive it is look at this map there are train stations everywhere there are towns tiny towns that have consistent reliable train service every 30 minutes in many other countries they wouldn't even provide bus service to a place this small some of the smallest towns have request stop service where you need to press this button to have the train stop but there's still train service and this train station that services only a single cafe a ski lift and a hiking trail has service every 30 minutes meanwhile the city of calgary in canada a city of 1.3 million people has no intercity train service at all zurich also has about 1.3 million people but almost 3 000 trains per day with train times so frequent you don't even need to look at a schedule so if you're taking the train here you won't have to wait very long frequencies like this are the gold standard of public transportation but this is really only feasible in more populated areas so how do they provide such good trained service to smaller towns and villages well switzerland is a relatively small country by a land area and some people may assume that's why the public transit can be so good but these wikipedia level statistics can be very misleading because by population swiss cities actually aren't that big after zurich the next largest city geneva has only about 600 000 people in the whole region in fact almost 50 percent of the entire population of switzerland lives in small villages of less than ten thousand people in a way switzerland is a sprawling country but instead of car dependent suburban sprawl like you'd see in north america it's village sprawl yet the country still manages to cover this highly dispersed population with exceptional public transport switzerland uses what is called clock face scheduling for example a transit vehicle that comes every 30 minutes will always come at 15 minutes and 45 minutes after the hour or five minutes and 35 minutes or maybe it's four times per hour at 5 20 35 and 50 minutes past the hour but regardless it's consistent and it goes all day so that regular users won't have to think too much about the schedule this is actually pretty normal and many countries schedule their public transit this way including the netherlands and germany but switzerland takes this a step further by synchronizing their timetables across the entire country a method called pulse timetabling or integrated timetables here's how it works train departure times at a train station are staggered so that trains may be arriving every 30 minutes and say 15 minutes past the hour and departing in a different direction at say 25 minutes past the hour this way most people arriving at the station will have at most 10 minutes to wait for their connecting train but switzerland integrates these timetables throughout the entire network across the entire country to minimize connection durations as much as possible not just mike's viewer jacque tur has written a great article about this that i'll link to in the description but here's a quick summary for those of you who are allergic to reading his analysis done at 10 a.m on a friday so outside of rush hour shows that across the entire swiss train network the average wait time for a connection is 8.4 minutes with 77 of all possible connections being 10 minutes or less that's astonishing and it means that even a trip with multiple train connections is only marginally longer than a single direct train another benefit of integrated timetabling is that the swiss can squeeze the most capacity possible out of their network switzerland is an incredibly mountainous country and that means that building rail lines is extremely expensive so there aren't a lot of individual rail lines and a small number of routes need to be shared by a large number of rail services this tight scheduling is the only way a route like this could operate with only a single track through the mountains for example while traveling through the south of switzerland our train occasionally needed to wait briefly for another train to clear the tunnel which was only a single track but wait times were short and we always arrived on time of course in order to pull this off the trains need to arrive when they're supposed to arrive and swiss trains are famously punctual the official statistic is that 91.9 of all trains arrive on time but it's even better than it sounds first of all on time is defined as within three minutes of the scheduled arrival time this is a much stricter definition than you'll find in many other countries here in the netherlands for example the national carrier nederlands considers a train to be on time if it's within five minutes of the scheduled arrival time and where i used to live in the greater toronto area go transit uses a 15-minute metric for on-time performance for a region that is a tiny fraction the size of switzerland but with a similar population and if you think that's bad via rail in canada says that 71 of their trains are on time but they don't publish what metric they use but anyway what's really impressive about the swiss train network is the connection punctuality 98.9 of trains in switzerland allow their passengers to make their connection which is amazing after all arriving at home five minutes late one day isn't really a big deal but just missing your connection to a train that only leads every 30 minutes is much worse but enough statistics and graphs what is it actually like to take the train in switzerland well first of all the trains are really nice every train i took was modern clean and comfortable in the mountain regions there are even trains with windows like this to enjoy the view and you definitely want to get a good view when the landscape looks like this there are also tourist trains like the glacier express that are even better but more about that later but even the regular intercity trains are great i want you to look at this scene for a moment how freaking civilized is this can you seriously tell me you'd rather sit in traffic on a highway confined to your seat with a belt constantly needing to pay attention with no way to comfortably eat or even take a piss instead of this i refuse to believe that there is any better way to travel than on a train like this one i was also impressed at how many trains had level boarding and direct access to wheelchair areas and accessible restrooms it wasn't every car on every service but it's clear that switzerland is making a concerted effort to ensure that their network remains accessible to everyone and every station i visited had ramps or elevators too though as i was filming my walk to my connecting train i wasn't expecting to see this guy take the escalator damn individual train trips in switzerland can be quite expensive but for residents it's quite common to have half price or regional travel cards loaded onto a swiss pass and some people are even provided on unlimited travel card by their employer for most of the week i traveled second class and in every case this was more than good enough but for the last four days i bought a countrywide travel pass for first class just to see the difference thank you patreon supporters first class is an upgrade but it's not significant and probably not worth the price unless the route you're taking is expected to be really busy however some of the trains have business zones like this one that are extremely comfortable and i was able to get a few hours of work done while in transit too there's a famous quote by the former mayor of bagota a developed country is not a place where the poor have cars it's where the rich use public transportation and that is absolutely the case in switzerland when i was traveling first class i routinely saw well-dressed people and professionals like this who opened their laptop to debrief after a business meeting i believe that having wealthy people take public transportation is important because for better or for worse these people are likely to have the power and political influence to demand efficient service for planning your journey the sbb app is fantastic you choose your route and it shows you exactly how long it's going to take and where you need to change with a list of every station in between and it will even show you the layout of the station and the exact path between platforms changing trains doesn't get any easier than this here is an example of a typical train trip one of the many i took during my week in switzerland in any other country i'd be worried about taking a trip with this many changes but when you're likely to catch your connection in 99 of cases it's not a problem at all here i look at my first connection the app shows me where i need to stand on the platform for my train as well as an estimate of how busy each carriage is the app tells me exactly where i need to get off to change trains and which platform i'm going to and i get a notification when we're getting close changing trains is trivial because i know exactly where i'm arriving and which platform i need to get to this is an older train but it's still clean and comfortable my next train was running almost three minutes late and the app warned me that the connection might not be possible but of course it was perfectly fine and i got to my next train with plenty of time to spare even when the connection involved a transfer to a bus it was waiting right outside because the schedules are properly aligned even to a connecting bus service so was all of my travel perfect in switzerland well no i took about two dozen trains while i was there and i was unlucky enough or lucky enough for the purpose of this video to miss one of my connections so what was that like well first the train was late because of a delay in another country oh switzerland throwing italy under the bus i mean train but from what i've been told many of the swiss trains that are late are late because they're coming from another country so this was a pretty typical experience so anyway my train was late and i missed my connection now there have been many times in my life where i've been driving between cities and i end up being half an hour late or an hour late or more because of unexpected car traffic this is just a normal part of travel especially in places with no alternatives to driving but being stuck in stop and go traffic like this sucks it sucks a lot and i hate it when i missed my connection in switzerland i was in a tiny town of only 13 000 people but while i waited i was able to grab something to eat and i stepped outside to enjoy the view when you drive in traffic you don't really know how long it's going to be and it's stressful and frustrating this delay was the exact polar opposite of that in fact it was a really enjoyable break i just wonder how much better the world would be if people's travel delays were like this instead of like this it just blows my mind that even a delayed train trip in switzerland was better than almost any inter-city driving trip i've ever done in the us or canada and can i just point out that this town of 13 000 people has regular train service including international trains but the best part about traveling in switzerland was that whenever i got to my destination no matter where it was it was always a short walk tram trip or gondola journey directly to where i wanted to go because every swiss city town and village is designed properly to be mixed use and walkable this was the very first time that i returned to the netherlands after a trip abroad and didn't think to myself oh finally back to civilization it's easy to feel that way when coming back from a trip to north america because everything is just so terrible there by comparison but returning from switzerland was different everything just seemed a bit less polished despite getting on a recently renovated train back to amsterdam zoud it still seemed kinda rickety and noisy compared to the train i left in zurich and i almost missed my train because i forgot to tap my ov chip card before boarding it was only at this point that i realized i hadn't gone through a fair gate for a train the whole time i was gone which was really really nice dutch cities are pretty great and that's an understatement and cycling is certainly better here than anywhere in switzerland and i talked about that in a previous video but there's something to be said about a country that is so well set up with high quality punctual and efficient public transportation that makes traveling so easy this carefree transportation felt like true freedom more so than any car dependent place i've ever been of course one of the things they definitely don't have here in the netherlands is mountains so one of the highlights of my trip was taking the glacier express a scenic train that takes you through some of the most beautiful views in the swiss alps i made a whole other video about what it's like to take the glacier express and you can watch it now on nebula nebula is the streamy award-winning service that was created by and for educational video creators like me on nebula you can watch all of my youtube videos completely ad and sponsor free and there's extra content like my glacier express video as well as videos from over 150 other creators on topics like engineering and technology history media analysis creative writing and more i legitimately enjoy nebula and i watch content on there almost every day you can sign up to nebula directly but it's actually cheaper to get it bundled for free with a subscription to curiositystream curiositystream is a streaming service for professionally produced educational and documentary films they have thousands of titles available on a wide range of topics for example i recently watched one of their documentaries about engadin a wilderness preserve in the swiss alps which was really interesting if you sign up at curiositystream.com not just bikes or with the coupon code not just bikes you will get curiosity stream and nebula for only 14.79 for the whole first year of service which is about as much as a ticket from zurich to basil if you don't have a travel card you can sign up using the link right here or in the description i'd also like to thank my supporters on patreon who pay me to travel first class on those sweet sweet swiss trains if you'd like your name and this list of supporters and get early access to my public videos visit patreon.com not just bikes you

Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 2,063,712

Keywords: urban planning, switzerland, swiss trains, sbb trains, the best trains

Id: muPcHs-E4qc

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2022