Notes from Switzerland: The nation-wide system of coordination

Tram station in Bern — Central tram station in Bern, Switzerland

The first full day of the study tour with Bay Area transit leaders kicked off in Bern, Switzerland’s capital and fifth largest city, with sessions with senior representatives from:

The Federal Office of Transport (FOT), which oversees all transportation policy in the country and allocates federal funding to regions
The Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE), which leads land use and growth planning nationwide
The Swiss Association of Public Transport (VoV/UPT), a voluntary member-based organization of public transport companies (mostly owned by various federal, regional and local governments) that lobbies on behalf of the sector, organizes workforce development, and develops industry standards
The Office of Alliance SwissPass, a member-based organization of public transport companies and fare associations which runs the nationwide integrated fare structure and transit pass program.

Given that Switzerland’s population (9m) is only slightly larger than that of the San Francisco Bay Area (7.8m), in terms of scale, the roles that the federal government plays are probably most applicably compared to those that could be done at either the Bay Area regional level, at the state of California level.

Here are five takeaways from Day 1:

1. Ridership recovery is over 100% of pre-pandemic levels

Bus-tram interchange station in suburban Bern, near FOT offices.

Nationwide, public transit ridership in Switzerland has recently surpassed pre-pandemic levels - back up to about 21% of all trips are taken on transit. By contrast, the Bay Area is still at about 60% of pre-pandemic rdership. Helmut Eichhorn of Alliance SwissPass explained, this not because Swiss people didn’t embrace working from home – a significant share of Swiss have converted to working from home, and still do. Commute and weekday trips are lower now than before the pre-pandemic levels. However, increases in weekend transit use and ‘leisure’ travel, including tourism, have more than compensated for the declines in commuting.

The 100% recovery is attributed to restoring high pre-pandemic service levels swiftly, and retaining the system of timed connections and integrated fares across the country and within regions. This networked system has proved to be incredibly adaptable to changes in people’s travel behaviors. It already served a variety of markets and trip purposes prior to the pandemic – and when peoples habits changed, transit was able to also be competitive in capturing a high share of the new leisure trips people were taking.

2. Pulsed, clock-face integrated timetables are key to the Swiss success story.

Nationwide vision of clock-face schedules that informs the national timetable.

The Swiss plan a nation-wide pulsed “clock face” integrated timetable for the core rail network - and all other regional local connections are planned around that. Regional trains pull into key hub stations at the same time - usually every 60, 30, 15, or 7.5 minutes, depending on the station the time of day - allowing passengers to transfer to other trains and local trams, buses, and even ferries. Stations, tracks, line extensions and other infrastructure are all planned to accommodate this specific timetable. Nationally, the Federal Office of Transport develops the overall timetable closely the country’s growth plan. Rail lines are designed to ensure that train journey times between major Swiss hubs are a bit less than one hour from each other. For example, trains between Zurich and Bern, which about the same distance as SF is to Sacramento, take about 52 minutes, and they run every 30 minutes. With the national timetable as a baseline, regional and local entities plan coordination at a more granular and local level.

3. Coordination is mandatory and tied to public funding

Transit fares, schedules, service, and capital projects are highly coordinated both at the regional level, through regional transport associations, and across the entire county. This coordination mandatory, but not in a top-down way – policies are developed in a highly collaborative and iterative manner. Specifically, Alliance SwissPass achieves a unified national fare pass, and oversees common customer information standards across all operators, by making it mandatory for operators to be part of its member-led association.

4. The Swiss system is constantly evolving, and governance roles continues to change to improve coordination and effectiveness.

Even with it’s extremely high transit use level - 21% of trips in Switzerland are taken on transit (compared to 5% in the Bay Area) – the Swiss have set even more ambitious goals for mode shift, and are evolving their institutions, processes, and governance to be even more effective than they are today. Especially in terms of capital project planning and funding, the federal government is taking on a greater role to ensure the effectiveness of investments.

5. The public has supported transit through ballot measures, and a virtuous cycle has been created as a result of an excellent customer experience.

FOT official telling the study tour about Switzerland’s history of successful ballot initiatives.

Major Swiss transit projects and taxes must be voted on through ballot measures. Since 1990, the Swiss have repeatedly voted in support of public transit, and the quality service and excellent record of delivering projects on time and budget have reinforced public trust in transit.

6. Even in rural and low density areas, the Swiss provides a base level of quality public transportation that connects seamless to the national network

The lowest density areas in Switzerland – which include many rural and remote areas, as well as suburban areas - have transit mode shares of 9-10%. This is double the 5% transit mode share of the Bay Area’s. A base level of transit service is provided in all communities across Switzerland, but importantly, services that may only operate once an hour or less are highly coordinated with the entire rest of the national network.

7. A long term vision of a coordinated system is a mandatory condition of funding capital projects. The country’s clock-face time table is a requirement for any operator or region seeing to build improvements – as is participation in the country’s fare integration program, Alliance SwissPass. To be competitive for the national “Agglomeration” fund, the main source of new capital project funding, regions must demonstrate coordination of modes, including transit with other transportation modes.

8. Transport operators are highly organized and work together to build capacity and share best practices.

The association of transit agencies nationwide, VoV/UTP, does more than just lobbying – for example, they collaborate significantly on developing shared industry standards. Of particular interest to the Bay Area, they collectively organize and manage the country’s workforce development and training program for public transportation. Both the Bay Area and Switzerland face immense workforce recruitment challenges, particularly for bus operators. Switzerland’s UTP-led association-led workforce initiatives appear to pool resources more efficiently to reach and attract more potential workers, in comparison the Bay Area’s workforce development efforts, which are agency-specific, and struggling to meet workforce needs.

9. Free transit was not part of the recovery of ridership. Switzerland’s attraction of people back to transit did not include any experiments with free transit. Fares make up 50% of transit revenues nation-wide, and about 2/3 of revenues in the Zurich region. Staff cited quality and usefulness of service as the key drivers of ridership recovery.

10. The Swiss plan their freight and passenger rail together. The Federal Office of Transport representatives noted that freight rail is nationalized in Switzerland, which allows the government to consider the best use of all railways, and consider both freight and passenger uses. Having all railways in public ownership really opens up the potential for access. This contrasts to the US where most freight railways are under private ownership, and therefore many rail lines that could carry significant passenger rail traffic are simply not usable. As a result, in the US, we end up building brand new passenger rail lines when underutilized freight lines exist.

The Swiss officials were incredibly generous with their time and were genuinely eager to share their experiences with the Bay Area study delegation. They keenly supported our efforts to create a more integrated transit system.

Following Day 1, the Bay Area study delegation traveled back to Zurich to meet with the local and regional agencies responsible for delivering a seamless transit system at a more granular level. Stay tuned for a future post on how regional and local coordination works in concert with requirements from the federal government.