SWITZERLAND | Railways

[Coccodrillo]

I doubt it has flights to Zürich (even as feeders) and for sure has no flights to Lugano. I'm not sure about Basel-Geneva but Geneva's airport statistics don't mention that line.

Geneva-Milan Malpensa trusting the statistics I have linked has about 2.500 a yer, but it is too low to be true, in my opinion.

[K_]

Originally Posted by Suissetralia

Charging on long-distance highly-used services not so much, because cities further away than others will be punished, I'm thinking about Geneva specificially and its services to Bern or Zurich, if they increase tariffs CFF will manage to get more passangers on planes and therefore the revenues will only increase marginally.

It's not about charging more for highly used services, rather than for higher quality services. To a certain extent SBB already does that. Bern - Geneva costs the same as Bern - Zürich, even though the distance to Geneva is larger. However, on Bern - Zürich the train is a lot faster.

[K_]

Originally Posted by Suburbanist

What about flights from Basel-Mulhouse? I bet there are as least some short-haul services originating from there.

There is an hourly Swiss flight from Basel to Zürich, leaves at 40 minutes past each hour from ZDH... But that is a codeshare. I leave it to you to guess with whom...

[Coccodrillo]

The ETR 470 of the Gotthard railway may be replaced by conventional trains very soon (but certainly not before the timetable change of december 2011), the four belonging to SBB would then be sold to Trenitalia. SBB may also sell three Re 484 locomotives to Trenitalia, and receive two new ETR 610 initially destined to Trenitalia as penalty for the late delivery of the first 610 series. Even if not confirmed this news is not an April Fools' Day's joke.

[Coccodrillo]

That news revealed to be only half-true: there is a real intention (or I should say "hope"?) to whitdraw the ETR 470 from service in Switzerland, and it is true that someone other postulate that the penalties for the late delivery of the ETR 610 could be paid as more trains, but this is not certain.

It is also likely that, if sold, the four ETR 470 belonging to SBB may go to Trenitalia because it owns the other five.

Wait and see.

[Suburbanist]

Why would SBB keep the newer trains and sell the crappiest ones to Trenitalia? Why would Trenitalia accept such a deal - unless there is significant money exchange?

In any case, that would be the ultimate demise, the last shovel over the Cisalpino graveyard.

[Coccodrillo]

As I said, it was an april's joke. I partly belived it, because it's not completely false: SBB is really planning to sell or to scrap the ETR 470, but it is not known when it will do it (in around 7 years at the latest, but probably before). And the most likely buyer would be Trenitalia as it already owns similar vehicles, while SBB, DB, ÖBB (the other network who may be interested to 3-15 kV EMU) do not.

It was also said some months ago that Alstom may give some newly built ETR 610 for free to SBB and Trenitalia as penalty for the late delivery of the first 14 trains (they were planned to be all delivered by December 2007, but will not until the end of this year).

[K_]

Originally Posted by Coccodrillo

As I said, it was an april's joke. I partly belived it, because it's not completely false: SBB is really planning to sell or to scrap the ETR 470, but it is not known when it will do it (in around 7 years at the latest, but probably before). And the most likely buyer would be Trenitalia as it already owns similar vehicles, while SBB, DB, ÖBB (the other network who may be interested to 3-15 kV EMU) do not.

It was also said some months ago that Alstom may give some newly built ETR 610 for free to SBB and Trenitalia as penalty for the late delivery of the first 14 trains (they were planned to be all delivered by December 2007, but will not until the end of this year).

SBB is in the market for a few more trainsets for international traffic. Soon they'll be forced to run to Italy in open access anyway.

[Coccodrillo]

I don't know if SBB could run elsewhere in openaccess as the inverse (foreign openaccess passenger operators in Switzerland) is not possible (thankfully).

And, if possible, this would be problematic (Trenitalia would not then sell SBB tickets). Colalboration with Trenitalia is still the best solution, after all.

[Momo1435]

The DB & ÖBB already operate the EuroCity from München - Brenner - Italy together with the FNM instead of the Trenitalia. If the SBB also finds an other partner in Italy or create their own Italian company they could also running in Italy as open access. The problem is that it will likely also effect other co-operations between the SBB and Trenitalia like the TILO.

But it will probably happen at some point in time since the relations between the 2 railways aren't getting any better. Now Trenitalia wants to pull out their ETR 610 sets from the former Cisalpino services to use them on internal services. That would only mean that they will still need the ETR 470 sets for a longer period. In other words, the SBB has to order more new trains if they want to improve the service.

The SBB has been looking into buying new tilting trains for quite some time now. Apart from the Italy services they would also be used on the new electrified services to München and also to be used internally to expand the ICN services. But it hasn't turned into a solid order yet, mostly because of the demands from the SBB. They wanted a 300 km/h fast train with a full tilting system. The railway industry has answered to the SBB that this is simply impossible. The bogies and trunks for a 300km/h train have to be very stiff, for a tilting train they have to be flexible. The problems with the ETR 610 have already highlighted this with a maximum speed of just 250 km/h.

This doesn't mean that there won't be a new order, but it will take another 4-5 years for the new trains to go in service if not later. Until then I don't expect that the SBB will go on and use the open access to go into Italy on their own. And maybe by then everything has already cleared up again so there won't be any need for this to happen.

[Coccodrillo]

In my opinion the ETR 470 will be retired in December 2011 and replaced by conventional trains which will use a modified temporary timetable (the existing one cannot be respected without tilting trains...and even with them it is quite rare trains arrive on time).

SBB needs Trenitalia mainly because of TILO (and viceversa Italy needs cooperation for its Varese-Como internal services which will pass throught Switzerland - just like the Salzburg-Innsbruck austrian intercitys pass throught Germany).

[Momo1435]

The question is if the SBB has enough conventional cars to replace even more ETR 470 services with loco hauled trains. They can use the cars on the Vienna services that are replaced by Railjet sets, but they might need look towards Austria to hire some Austrian Eurofima cars for some extra capacity.

And with the whole open access happening right now in Europe we will see more competition between different railway companies. And that leads to some strange situations where railway companies compete with each other in some areas while cooperating in others.

[Coccodrillo]

They will have to find them.

Starting from tomorrow, all the 16 daily Milan-Lugano-Gotthard-Zurich/Basel trains (except one) will be preceded by one IC train from Lugano onwards. The SBB are running some of these extra trains since the timetable structure change in December 2008 for capacity reasons (the ETR 470 are sometimes too small) and to avoid delays to more heavily used trains.


This is extremely costly, as some of these EC trains during off-peak hours aren't full, and would not need an extra IC, but this will have to run because of the frequent delays. Delays and extra trains aren't affordable on the long term, so I think there will be a new timetable in December with conventional trains instead of the ETR.

[Dase]

Originally Posted by K_

There is an hourly Swiss flight from Basel to Zürich, leaves at 40 minutes past each hour from ZDH... But that is a codeshare. I leave it to you to guess with whom...

There is still one daily flight to ZRH with an ARJ, leaving BSL in the morning and returning close to midnight.

[K_]

Originally Posted by Coccodrillo

I don't know if SBB could run elsewhere in openaccess as the inverse (foreign openaccess passenger operators in Switzerland) is not possible (thankfully).

Open access will come, and I doubt it will be bad for SBB.

And, if possible, this would be problematic (Trenitalia would not then sell SBB tickets). Colalboration with Trenitalia is still the best solution, after all.

The problem is that Trenitalia is not very cooperative. See what happened in with Austria - Italy trains. ÖBB now even runs busses to Italy...

[Coccodrillo]

Originally Posted by K_

Open access will come, and I doubt it will be bad for SBB.

It will be bad, it will. There is too much demand on too much relations involving changing trains to make it possible.

Competition "for the market" would be little more acceptable, but I still don't see the point.

[thun]

Originally Posted by K_

The problem is that Trenitalia is not very cooperative. See what happened in with Austria - Italy trains. ÖBB now even runs busses to Italy...

Even worse: ÖBB/DB have to run busses between Padova, Vicenza and Verona to connect those cities with their Venice-Munich ECs because they aren't allowed to stop the train running through the first two cities there in order to protect Trenitalias business.

It's not even possible to buy tickets for trains operated by other Italian companies on routes where there are no Trenitalia trains at a Trenitalia counter. When I went from Verona to Malles, I had to run to the ticket machine in Meran to buy a ticket there within the two minutes scheduled for changing trains. At least the Trenitalia website (which against all odds knows those connections as well) calculates that under normal circumstances, you wouldn't succeed to do so and calculates with one hour waiting time in Meran in the first place...

[Coccodrillo]

Originally Posted by Coccodrillo

It will be bad, it will. There is too much demand on too much relations involving changing trains to make it possible.

In relation to that, the federal government plan new infrastructures together with their timetable, so as to maximize capacity but minimizing the cost.

[K_]

Originally Posted by Coccodrillo

It will be bad, it will. There is too much demand on too much relations involving changing trains to make it possible.

I don't understand this. If there is "to much demand" how could other companies entering the market (and we're only talking international trains here) be bad?

Competition "for the market" would be little more acceptable, but I still don't see the point.

the point is that you're not limited to whatever the incumbent is willing to offer. We're so used to the high level of service offered by SBB that we don't realize how it is elsewhere. But people in Switzerland also don't realize there might be a market for a cheaper, lower standard service. I often have a hard time explaining tourists that Geneve - Zürich is always 82,- CHF.
"What do you mean, you can't save money by taking slower trains or a bus?"

[Suburbanist]

If SBB wants to operate more trains in Italy, it should allow Italian companies to operate more trains in Switzerland. Reciprocity FTW.

You can't have actual competition for international services if you only have trains that are operated by each national railway involved. That is how international train service was done in Europe until the first join-ventures like Thalys, Artesia, CityNightLine etc. were established, and it was an horrible service in general.

What appears to me is that SBB is very keen on avoiding as much international traffic as possible because it is a "hassle" to their "perfect" timetables. Then Italy have different, odd requirements like 2-person crews and an unhelpful operation management.