Swiss Federal Railways

Swiss Federal Railways is divided into three divisions and eight groups.[12] The divisions manage the relevant operational businesses. These divisions are:

• Passenger traffic
• Infrastructure
• Real estate

The former division Cargo became an independent group company at the beginning of 2019.

SBB's eight groups manage the company and support the operational business of the divisions with service and support functions. These groups are:

• Finance
• HR
• IT
• Communications
• Corporate Development
• Safety & Quality
• Legal and Compliance
• Supply Chain Management

The corporation is led in an entrepreneurial manner. A performance agreement between Swiss Federal Railways and the Swiss Confederation defines the requirements and is updated every four years. At the same time the compensation rates per train and track-kilometre are defined.

A subsidiary, SBB GmbH, is responsible for passenger traffic in Germany. It operates the Wiesentalbahn and the Seehas services. Other subsidiaries are THURBO, RegionAlps, AlpTransit Gotthard AG, Cisalpino, and TiLo (the latter in conjunction with Italian authorities). Swiss Federal Railways hold significant shares of the Zentralbahn and Lyria SAS.

The Stiftung Historisches Erbe der SBB ("SBB Historic") was founded in 2002. This foundation takes care of historic rolling stock and runs a technical library in Bern, document and photographic archives, and the SBB poster collection.

ICN between Zurich and Winterthur

All figures from 2021:

• Length of railway network: 3,156 km in standard gauge and 103 km metre gauge[13]
• Percentage electrified routes: 100%[13]
• Employees: 33,943[14]
• Passengers carried per day: 0.88 million[15]
• Passenger-kilometer per inhabitant and year: 2,215 kilometres (1,376 mi)[15]
• Stations open to passengers: 795[13]
• Customer Punctuality: 91.9% of all passengers reached their destination - measured from departure station including any necessary changes - with less than 3 minutes of delay (either 2 or 1 minute delay, or on time)[16]
• Customer-weighted connection punctuality: 98.9%[16]
• Freight per year: 48 million tons[15]
• Stations with freight traffic: 193
• Railway tunnels: 311[13]
• Railway Tunnels total length: 431.0 kilometres (267.8 mi)[13]
• Longest Tunnel: 57.1 kilometres (35.5 mi) (Gotthard Base Tunnel) world record
• Railway Bridges: 4,925[13]
• Railway bridges total length: 108.7 kilometres (67.5 mi)[13]
• Electric multiple units (fixed compositions of power cars and coaches): 656[17]
• Power Cars: 108[17]
• Mainline locomotives: 543 (passenger services: 322 / freight services: 221)[17]
• Shunting locomotives: 224 (38/75/ infrastructure: 111)[17]
• Shunting tractors: 245 (18/24/203)[17]
• Passenger coaches: 1,982[17]
• Freight wagons: 4,671[17]
• Hydroelectric plants: 8[13]
• Electricity produced and procured: 3063 GWh[13]
• Electricity used for railway operations: 2,275 GWh[13]
• Proportion of traction current from renewable sources: 90.2%[13]

The Swiss Federal Railways rail network is totally electrified. The metre gauge Brünigbahn was SBB's only non-standard gauge line, until it was out-sourced and merged with the Luzern-Stans-Engelberg-Bahn to form the Zentralbahn, in which SBB holds shares.

Historic SBB push-pull train consisting of BDe 4/4, A, ABt near Hettlingen ZH

In the 19th century, all Swiss railways were owned by private ventures. The economic and political interests of these companies led to lines being built in parallel and some companies went bankrupt in the resulting competition. On 20 February 1898 the Swiss people agreed in a referendum to the creation of a state-owned railway company.

Later that year, the Federal Assembly approved the purchase of Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB) to operate trains on behalf of the federal government. The first train running on the account of the Swiss Confederation ran during the night of New Year's Eve 1900/New Year's Day 1901 from Zurich via Bern to Geneva, and received a ceremonial welcome upon arriving in Bern. SBB's management board was first formed in mid-1901, and added Schweizerische Nordostbahn (NOB) to the system on 1 January 1902. This date is now observed as the "official" birthday of SBB.[18]

The following railway companies were nationalised:

• Aargauische Südbahn (ASB)
• Bötzbergbahn (BöB)
• Schweizerische Nordostbahn (NOB)
• Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB)
• Toggenburgerbahn (TB)
• Vereinigte Schweizerbahnen (VSB)
• Tösstalbahn including the Wald-Rüti Railway (WR)
• Wohlen-Bremgarten Railway (WB)
• Jura-Simplon-Bahn (JS) including the Brünigbahn (the latter in 1903)

Other companies were included later, and the rail network was extended. It is still growing today.

On 1 January 1999 the Swiss Federal Railway has been excluded from the Federal Administration and became a fully state-owned (the federal state owns 100% of all shares) limited company regulated by public law (German: Spezialgesetzliche Aktiengesellschaft).

First class compartments were discontinued on 3 June 1956, and second and third class accommodation was reclassified as first and second class, respectively.

In 1982 SBB introduced the Taktfahrplan (clock-face schedule), with trains for certain destinations leaving every 60 minutes, greatly simplifying the timetable.

Example of integrated timetables between inter-regional and regional services on the Swiss network. The two trains are programmed to meet in the hub of Geneva at 15:30, sharing a platform, to minimise transfer times.

On 12 December 2004 the first phase of Bahn2000, an ambitious programme to improve the company's services, was put into effect.[19] The core element was the Zurich-Bern-Basel triangle, where travel times between the cities was reduced to under one hour, resulting in good connections from these stations for most trains. Some connections between cities got two trains in each direction per hour or more, and the S-Bahn services were intensified to four or more trains per hour. Because of these changes 90% of the timetable was changed, 12% more trains were scheduled and travel times generally improved. It was the greatest timetable change since the introduction of the Taktfahrplan.

For this change to be possible, large parts of the infrastructure had to be modified and many stations were rebuilt, for instance the line from Ziegelbrücke to Sargans or Bern main station which got the "wave of Bern", a platform over the tracks to provide better access to the platforms and the city centre.

On 22 June 2005 a short circuit on a long-distance power transmission line in central Switzerland led to a chain reaction. The entire Swiss railway network was out of service during rush hour and an estimated 200,000 people and 1,500 trains were stuck at stations or somewhere on the track. It turned out that the SBB power transmission network was overloaded and did not provide enough redundancy to tolerate the shutdown of the four cable Amsteg-Steinen power line due to construction work. So, the power grid was split in two parts, the northern half being overloaded and the southern half having a load reduction for the SBB power plants are situated in the southern part (the Alps), while most of the power is needed in the northern part (the Swiss plateau). The situation led to high voltage fluctuations and finally breakdown and emergency shutdown of the entire power supply.

In the same year, the Swiss Federal Railways received the Wakker Prize, an award given out by the Swiss Heimatschutz (an institution aiming to preserve significant buildings), which is usually only granted to communes, for their extraordinary efforts. The Swiss Federal Railways have many listed buildings from well-known architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, Santiago Calatrava, and Max Vogt.

In May 2010, SBB's first integrated network control centre opened in Lausanne, to supervise all of SBB's network in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Another integrated control centre will be opened in Zurich.[20]

All trains and most buildings have been made non-smoking since the timetable change of 11 December 2005.

By the end of 2006, the corporation was handed over from the long-term CEO Benedikt Weibel to his successor Andreas Meyer.

On 13 January 2019, Bloomberg reported that SBB was in talks with German aviation company Lilium GmbH to create air taxis to carry customers from train stations to their final destination.[21]

Swiss railway clock

The Swiss Federal Railways clock designed by Hans Hilfiker has become a national icon.[22] It is special in that it stops for just over a second at the end of each minute, to wait for a signal from the master clock which sets it going again — thus keeping all station clocks synchronised.[23][24]

The clock owes its technology to the particular requirements of operating a railway. First, railway timetables do not list seconds; trains in Switzerland always leave the station on the full minute. Secondly, all the clocks at a railway station have to run synchronously in order to show reliable time for both passengers and railway personnel anywhere on or around the station.[23]

The station clocks in Switzerland are synchronized by receiving an electrical impulse from a central master clock at each full minute, advancing the minute hand by one minute. The second hand is driven by an electrical motor independent of the master clock. It requires only about 58.5 seconds to circle the face, then the hand pauses briefly at the top of the clock. It starts a new rotation as soon as it receives the next minute impulse from the master clock.[23] This movement is emulated in some of the licensed timepieces made by Mondaine.

Distribution of Languages in Switzerland

SBB uses three official languages: German, French, and Italian. The Romansh-speaking regions in the canton of Grisons of Switzerland is served mostly by the Rhaetian Railway. Trains are branded "SBB CFF FFS".

Stations are named and signposted exclusively in the language of the locality. Stations of bilingual cities are named and signposted in both local languages (e.g. Biel/Bienne and Fribourg/Freiburg). The timetable only uses such official names regardless of the languages of the timetable.

Announcements in stations are usually made in local languages. However, in stations frequently used by foreigners (airports or tourism regions), in-station announcements are also made in English. On-board welcome announcements are made in all official languages of the regions served by that train, with the additional English ones onboard IC trains. Then the stops are announced in the pre-recorded local language of the town. For stations of bilingual cities, the language of announcement changes at the time of stop: when trains travelling from the French-speaking region to the German-speaking region via the bilingual city of Biel/Bienne, announcements are made in French until arriving at Bienne, and then switch to German after departing from Biel. Upon arriving at big hubs, the train conductor takes the microphone to announce in all official languages of the regions served by that train (plus English onboard IC trains) that the train is arriving, if the train is on time or not, and next connections at the station.

For instance, the main station in the German-speaking Zurich is signposted as Zürich HB (short for Zürich Hauptbahnhof) exclusively in German, while its French name (Zurich gare centrale), Italian name (Zurigo stazione centrale), and English name (Zurich Main Station) are used in websites and announcements in respective languages.

Since 2002, SBB has used Music in train announcements. The notes in the music correspond to the acronyms SBB CFF FFS, transposed by means of the German notes "Es - B - B" (E♭, B♭, B♭), "C - F - F" (C, F, F) and "F - F - Es" (F, F, E♭). For the German acronym, as there is no "S" note, the "Es" was used. And for the last letter, it is the B♭/G♭ chord that is played. The melody is played on a vibraphone.[30]

• SBB codeshares with American Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines, and United Airlines out of Zurich Airport.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to SBB-CFF-FFS.

• English SBB website
  • We are SBB Archived 2 April 2020 at the Wayback Machine
• The SBB cargo website Archived 18 September 2004 at the Wayback Machine
• The CityNightLine website in German, Dutch, or English Archived 24 August 2004 at the Wayback Machine
• Hans-Peter Bärtschi: Federal Railways in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 27 November 2012.