Are Swiss trains genuinely reliable?

[johncrossley]

Are Swiss trains genuinely reliable and can we believe the punctuality statistics? Is so, how do they prevent trains and infrastructure breaking down? Are they doing things that other countries aren't?

 

[cactustwirly]

Are Swiss trains genuinely reliable and can we believe the punctuality statistics? Is so, how do they prevent trains and infrastructure breaking down? Are they doing things that other countries aren't?

Having more slack in the times, less intensive service so infrastructure isn't as congested.
Strict adherence to train categories so you don't have semi fast commuter services crossing from fast to slow lines etc (unlike Thameslink, LNR and GWR services)

 

[The Pelican]

Are Swiss trains genuinely reliable and can we believe the punctuality statistics? Is so, how do they prevent trains and infrastructure breaking down? Are they doing things that other countries aren't?

This data on short and medium distance trains from the European Passenger's federation: https://www.epf.eu/wp/10929-2/

suggests that Swiss trains are very highly reliable, 2nd from the top for long distance reliablity and 8th for short and medium distance reliability. It also has graphs suggesting that Switzerland spends a lot on new infrastructure.

It certainly seems to be required for the Taktfahrplan system- journeys reliant on making a connection are always much more sensetive to delays (because a delay on either train can slow the journey down), although I don't know if the taktfahrplan or the high reliability came first.

As with the Taktfahrplan, punctuality has trade offs- both the speed and the frequency are less than could have been paid for with the same investment money.

Interestingly, although the graph suggests Switzerland is near the top level of punctuality for countries with big railway networks, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands all do better on short and medium distance services - so perhaps "smallish countries which have been reasonably well off for a long time" also helps explain exactly where the best results are found.

 

[furnessvale]

This data on short and medium distance trains from the European Passenger's federation: https://www.epf.eu/wp/10929-2/

suggests that Swiss trains are very highly reliable, 2nd from the top for long distance reliablity and 8th for short and medium distance reliability. It also has graphs suggesting that Switzerland spends a lot on new infrastructure.

It certainly seems to be required for the Taktfahrplan system- journeys reliant on making a connection are always much more sensetive to delays (because a delay on either train can slow the journey down), although I don't know if the taktfahrplan or the high reliability came first.

As with the Taktfahrplan, punctuality has trade offs- both the speed and the frequency are less than could have been paid for with the same investment money.

Interestingly, although the graph suggests Switzerland is near the top level of punctuality for countries with big railway networks, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands all do better on short and medium distance services - so perhaps "smallish countries which have been reasonably well off for a long time" also helps explain exactly where the best results are found.

Impressive that Switzerland applies a tighter on time definition than others.

In the past, I have seen the Swiss send off the Swiss add on coaches to international services as a separate train, to avoid picking up delays from late arrivals from other countries.

I would also agree that consistent spending of money on new flyovers to remove conflicts, year on year, pays dividends. The UK has been particularly remiss in this area. Even within a few miles of where I live, there are several locations that would benefit from such works, let alone looking on a national level.

 

[Tester]

The Swiss famously decide many things by referendum, and strategic rail budget plans are done in this way.

A feature of the referendum campaigning is that increased expenditure on rail helps reduce congestion for both rail and road, therefore being of interest to non rail users.

This is not a concept which gains much traction here, where a zero sum mentality holds that rail expenditure must be a bad thing for road users

 

[baz962]

Are Swiss trains genuinely reliable and can we believe the punctuality statistics? Is so, how do they prevent trains and infrastructure breaking down? Are they doing things that other countries aren't?

I always wanted to visit Switzerland and eventually went last year. I got trains between Geneva airport and my hotel several times and they were bang on time and I was very impressed. However on one of the days , we did a day trip to Lausanne and two trains in a row were cancelled and we incurred an hour delay. Guess every country has its problems.

 

[43096]

In the past, I have seen the Swiss send off the Swiss add on coaches to international services as a separate train, to avoid picking up delays from late arrivals from other countries.

SBB also had/have strategically placed spare trains (ersatzzug) at places such as Basel and Zürich that can slot in to a path to maintain the internal timetable if a service from another country is delayed.

 

[johncrossley]

Are signalling and points more reliable than in the UK?

 

[MarcVD]

In good part because they keep their physical plant and rolling stock in immaculate condition. Never saw a railway network where maintenance was taken as seriously as over there.

 

[Tester]

In good part because they keep their physical plant and rolling stock in immaculate condition. Never saw a railway network where maintenance was taken as seriously as over there.

Japan says hello

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

In good part because they keep their physical plant and rolling stock in immaculate condition. Never saw a railway network where maintenance was taken as seriously as over there.

Yes, Marc, puts his finger on it. I recall discussing this with the CEO of the BLS in 2011 and some of his team. Their view was that the budgets for maintenance of track and train had always been preserved through ups and downs of the economy and, as a result, both were highly reliable. Which is certainly borne out by experience of travelling there the past 20 years...

 

[yorkie]

Are Swiss trains genuinely reliable...

Yes, and the emphasis is on passenger journeys being reliable, which is very different to the UK approach!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Oct 2025 ==

Having more slack in the times...

Not in all cases, and indeed there are plenty of examples of UK trains having loads of slack.

less intensive service so infrastructure isn't as congested.

Perhaps @Oscar can provide some examples to the contrary

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Oct 2025 ==

I always wanted to visit Switzerland and eventually went last year. I got trains between Geneva airport and my hotel several times and they were bang on time and I was very impressed. However on one of the days , we did a day trip to Lausanne and two trains in a row were cancelled and we incurred an hour delay. Guess every country has its problems.

Yes it can happen anywhere, but out of many journeys since 2018, I'm yet to experience anything like that.

 

[cactustwirly]

Yes, and the emphasis is on passenger journeys being reliable, which is very different to the UK approach!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Oct 2025 ==


Not in all cases, and indeed there are plenty of examples of UK trains having loads of slack.

Perhaps @Oscar can provide some examples to the contrary

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Oct 2025 ==


Yes it can happen anywhere, but out of many journeys since 2018, I'm yet to experience anything like that.

I guess I was comparing it to a London and Southeast service level.

I thought the S Bahn and regional services were less frequent but higher capacity than the UK.
Ie running double decker trains every 30 minutes instead of single deck trains every 15 minutes.

I guess if you compare it to Manchester or Leeds then Switzerland looks a lot better!

 

[Moritzplatz]

SBB also had/have strategically placed spare trains (Ersatzzug) at places such as Basel and Zürich that can slot in to a path to maintain the internal timetable if a service from another country is delayed.

That's very much still the case: if a train crosses the border from Germany into Switzerland more than 20 minutes late, SBB terminates the train in (say) Basel, where passengers are then required to change onto a Swiss train.

In the first quarter of 2024, that fate befell one in ten Deutsche Bahn trains. On the Munich-Zurich route, for example, 60 out of 545 trains (i.e. 11%) were terminated early. This figure had risen from 1.2% in 2022 and 2.1% in 2023, and these were years when there was at least the excuse of bad weather and accidents affecting punctuality rates. In 2024, on the other hand, 75% of these delays were caused by infrastructure problems in Germany.

The Swiss have given up on the situation in Germany improving any time soon. From 29 April 2025 onwards, EC7 trains from Hamburg and EC9 trains from Dortmund, which originally would have travelled on to Interlaken Ost and Zurich, have been officially timetabled to terminate in Basel (until the next timetable change in December, at least).

 

[RT4038]

So the conclusion seems to be (what we all know) that reliability costs money - more money spent on maintenance, more money spent on infrastructure, more money spent on spare infrastructure, rolling stock (and I daresay staff). Not rocket science. We can churn over the reasons for this, which largely are a matter of cultural and historical differences.

 

[bahnause]

So the conclusion seems to be (what we all know) that reliability costs money - more money spent on maintenance, more money spent on infrastructure, more money spent on spare infrastructure, rolling stock (and I daresay staff). Not rocket science. We can churn over the reasons for this, which largely are a matter of cultural and historical differences.

Above all, long-term planning requires long-term financing. No company will develop resources simply because funds are available for the next four or five years. That not even be enough for ramping up the training for specialists. These funds must be guaranteed for at least 15 or 20 years. Otherwise, the situation will be similar to that in Germany, where available funds could not be claimed. There were no resources available for planning or implementation. Money alone is not enough.

 

[Krokodil]

8th for short and medium distance reliability.

Worth noting that Switzerland uses a stricter definition of "late" here so it would actually be placed higher in a fair comparison.

 

[Moritzplatz]

It's also worth noting that Swiss train punctuality has increased year-on-year since 2019 from an already high base. 93.20% of all SBB trains were on time in the calendar year 2024, compared to 92.54% in 2023, with punctuality for train connections ('Anschlusspünktlichkeit') being as high as 98.7%. (A train is punctual in Switzerland if it arrives within three minutes of its scheduled arrival time.)

All of this was achieved despite some heavy snowfalls blocking lines, particularly in November 2024. Unsurprisingly, SBB customer satisfaction as regards punctuality rose by 1.5% to 87.6% in 2024.

Interestingly, perhaps, rail freight transport 'only' had a punctuality rate of 88% in 2024, which constituted a drop of 1.8%. This was in part due to the introduction of new IT systems and the usage of older, unreliable locomotives.

 

[eldomtom2]

So the conclusion seems to be (what we all know) that reliability costs money - more money spent on maintenance, more money spent on infrastructure, more money spent on spare infrastructure, rolling stock (and I daresay staff). Not rocket science. We can churn over the reasons for this, which largely are a matter of cultural and historical differences.

I don't think it's as simple as reliability being directly correlated with money spent with no other factors involved, though.

 

[Tester]

It's also worth noting that Swiss train punctuality has increased year-on-year since 2019 from an already high base. 93.20% of all SBB trains were on time in the calendar year 2024, compared to 92.54% in 2023, with punctuality for train connections ('Anschlusspünktlichkeit') being as high as 98.7%. (A train is punctual in Switzerland if it arrives within three minutes of its scheduled arrival time.)

The bold part is really important.

One of the ways that Swiss public transport is so efficient and user friendly is that you can get from pretty much anywhere to pretty much anywhere else, every hour, with connections that work.

 

[Richard Scott]

Generally Switzerland is very good but when it does fall down it can go spectacularly wrong. They don't seen to be able to cope with an issue and witnessed this a few years back where almost everything around Chur was late because of a problem know a single line quite a distance away. Took quite a while before it was back to normal.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Having more slack in the times, less intensive service so infrastructure isn't as congested.
Strict adherence to train categories so you don't have semi fast commuter services crossing from fast to slow lines etc (unlike Thameslink, LNR and GWR services)

Spent a week in and around NE Switzerland in late September and wouldn't say there was slack on the schedules at all. Used a variety of Thurbo, IR and IC services. All trains perfectly clean inside and out and right time running except the Munich-Zurich services which were late on inbound services on most days but still extraordinarily well used whatever the day of the week. Drivers flat out from every station and sustained running between station calls. Where they do benefit massively over the UK is having plenty of platforms to accommodate multiple service groups simultaneously thus providing good connections. Oh and even the local bus services connect well and advertised on the train information screens.

 

[mountainpixel]

I take an unofficial connection nearly every day to uni. Meaning it is not shown in public timetables as the connection in Zurich is deemed too short. Can't remember when I last missed that connection.
During the exam season, many of my peers don't even take an earlier train and arrive just a couple of minutes before the exam starts. Yes, the trains are very reliable.

When traveling abroad, I sometimes fall into the trap of planing trips like I would back home. They usually fall apart quite quickly...

 

[The exile]

So the conclusion seems to be (what we all know) that reliability costs money - more money spent on maintenance, more money spent on infrastructure, more money spent on spare infrastructure, rolling stock (and I daresay staff). Not rocket science. We can churn over the reasons for this, which largely are a matter of cultural and historical differences.

A genuine question here - how much management time over here (and in Switzerland - if ever applicable) goes into analysing why particular trains (or groups of services) are consistently 1 or 2 minutes late. A 60 minute delay is the one that “makes the headlines “ but is almost certainly due to something unexpected. Situations where either 50% of trains leave station x 1 or 2 minutes late or train x is almost always 1 or 2 minutes late suggest a systematic problem - and that’s what we seem to have.

 

[cactustwirly]

The Germans have the same idea as the Swiss taktfahrplan, lots of infrastructure and platforms etc.

Their railways make the UK look very reliable!

 

[The Pelican]

Yes, I think it's worth noting that the UK often seems not to be too bad on reliability- I think the main problem is that every few years, someone comes up with the great new scheme of joining lots of services either side of a single set of tracks- causing the kind of chaos seen in the early Thameslink Programme timetables (especially ingr Kings Cross directon), the LNWR cross-New Street services, and the Manchester Castlefield Corridor issues. When there is a long run without that kind of idea, the UK railways can be pretty reliable. Delay Repay also seems like a very good feature for making people more willing to accept delays when they occur.

 

[Krokodil]

Where they do benefit massively over the UK is having plenty of platforms to accommodate multiple service groups simultaneously thus providing good connections.

Which also means that you don't get stuck outside stations waiting for platforms to become available. This helps prevent delays from spreading further.

The Germans have the same idea as the Swiss taktfahrplan, lots of infrastructure and platforms etc.

Their railways make the UK look very reliable!

Investment in maintenance and renewals is very important too.

 

[Cloud Strife]

So the conclusion seems to be (what we all know) that reliability costs money - more money spent on maintenance, more money spent on infrastructure, more money spent on spare infrastructure, rolling stock (and I daresay staff). Not rocket science. We can churn over the reasons for this, which largely are a matter of cultural and historical differences.

Not only that, but also a mentality in which you're constantly looking for perfection. "Good enough" usually isn't anywhere near good enough for the Swiss, they expect things to work flawlessly, and they're also not afraid to enforce rules on others. It's also little things, like you won't find a Swiss rail replacement bus driver getting lost, unlike what happens all the time in the UK.

But ultimately, it's about money.

 

[DanNCL]

I spent a week in Switzerland in July and only encountered one delay, which was on a Railjet, albeit the cause of the delay was in Switzerland. It was major disruption too, but handled better than I’ve ever seen equivalent disruption handled in the UK.

The Railjet had departed Zürich HB as usual but only made it as far as Zürich Wiedikon before being stopped. Can’t remember exactly what it was now but it meant that the usual route to Sargans was blocked.
Within 10 minutes of stopping at Zürich Wiedikon the train had left again in the reverse direction to take a diversionary route to Buchs, running non-stop through the low level platforms at Zürich HB and then via Winterthur, Amriswil and St Margrethen. Arrival into Buchs was about an hour late, the diversionary route skipped Sargans so for those headed there like I was a trip on IR13 was also required, no difficulty whatsoever with using an advance (or whatever SBB’s equivalent is) for the Railjet on the IR13 to get to Sargans from Buchs.

It struck me how well prepared they were for this disruption and how quickly they were able to implement an unplanned diversion. The chances of the main Zürich to Sargans line becoming blocked whilst an Eastbound Railjet is between Zürich HB and Zürich Wiedikon (as opposed to before it departs Zürich HB) are very low and yet SBB were still fully prepared for that scenario when it happened. A UK equivalent would be a service leaving New Street but only making it as far as Smethwick before the line became blocked at Sandwell, then almost immediately reversing, going back through New Street and going via Aston and Tame Bridge Parkway to reach Wolverhampton instead, it likely wouldn’t happen.

So yes, Swiss railways are reliable. And on the rare occasions things go wrong they appear to be very good at handling it.

 

[The exile]

The Germans have the same idea as the Swiss taktfahrplan, lots of infrastructure and platforms etc.

Their railways make the UK look very reliable!

I think you’ll find a lot of Germans would react with incredulity to that statement nowadays (although to a certain extent that is an indication of expectations raised by decades of excellent punctuality!)