Swiss Federal Railways


Swiss Federal Railways is the national railway company of Switzerland.
The company was founded in 1902 and is headquartered in Bern. It used to be a government institution, but since 1999 it has been a special stock corporation whose shares are held by the Swiss Confederation and the Swiss cantons. It is the largest rail and transport company of Switzerland; it operates on most standard gauge lines of the Swiss railway network. It also heavily collaborates with most other transport companies of the country, such as the BLS, one of its main competitors, or Südostbahn, to provide fully integrated timetables with cyclic schedules.
SBB was ranked first among national European rail systems in the 2017 European Railway Performance Index for its intensity of use, quality of service, and safety rating. While many rail operators in continental Europe have emphasised the building of high-speed rail, SBB has invested in the reliability and quality of service of its conventional rail network, on both national and regional scales. In addition to passenger rail, SBB operates cargo and freight rail service through its subsidiary SBB Cargo, and has large real estate holdings in Switzerland.

Name

The company is commonly referred to by the initials of its three official names, in German, French and Italian – defined by federal law SR/RS 742.31 Art. 2 §1 – either as SBB CFF FFS, or used separately. The official English abbreviation is SBB.
While the official Romansh name, Viafiers federalas svizras, can be found in federal laws and associated documents, as well as Romansh-language media, it is not used by the company itself.

Organisation

Swiss Federal Railways is divided into three divisions and eight groups. The divisions manage the relevant operational businesses. These divisions are:
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:
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 German subsidiary, SBB GmbH, is responsible for passenger traffic in Germany. It operates the Wiesentalbahn, the Seehas services and services of Schaffhausen S-Bahn. Other subsidiaries are Thurbo, RegionAlps, AlpTransit Gotthard AG, Cisalpino, and TiLo. Swiss Federal Railways hold significant shares of the Zentralbahn and Lyria SAS.
The Stiftung Historisches Erbe der SBB 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.

Figures

All figures from 2024:
Length of railway network in standard gauge
Percentage electrified routes100%
Employees35,569
Passengers carried per day1.39 million
Passenger-kilometre per inhabitant and year
Stations open to passengers801
Customer punctuality93.2% of all passengers reached their destination – measured from departure station including any necessary changes – with less than three minutes of delay
Customer-weighted connection punctuality98.9%
Freight per year43,1 million tons
Stations with freight traffic193
Railway tunnels311
Railway tunnels total length
Longest tunnel world record
Railway bridges4,925
Railway bridges total length
Electric multiple units 656
Power cars108
Mainline locomotives543
Shunting locomotives224
Shunting tractors245
Passenger coaches1,982
Freight wagons4,671
Hydroelectric plants8
Electricity produced and procured3063 GWh
Electricity used for railway operations2,275 GWh
Proportion of traction current from renewable sources100%

The Swiss Federal Railways rail network is totally electrified. Its last non-electrified railway line was closed to regular traffic in 2004 and it is now a heritage railway.
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.

History

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 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 the Schweizerische Nordostbahn to the system on 1 January 1902. This date is now observed as the "official" birthday of SBB.
The following railway companies were nationalised:
  • Aargauische Südbahn
  • Bötzbergbahn
  • Schweizerische Nordostbahn
  • Schweizerische Centralbahn
  • Toggenburgerbahn
  • Vereinigte Schweizerbahnen
  • Tösstalbahn including the Wald-Rüti Railway
  • Wohlen-Bremgarten Railway
  • Jura-Simplon-Bahn including the Brünigbahn
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 limited company regulated by public law.
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, with trains for certain destinations leaving every 60 minutes, greatly simplifying the timetable.
On 12 December 2004 the first phase of Bahn2000, an ambitious programme to improve the company's services, was put into effect. The core element was the –– 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 bridge 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, while most of the power is needed in the northern part. 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, 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.
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.

Clock

The Swiss Federal Railways clock designed by Hans Hilfiker has become a national icon. 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.
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.
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. This movement is emulated in some of the licensed timepieces made by Mondaine.