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. The first train running on the account of the Swiss Confederation ran during the night of New Year's Day in 1901 from Zurich via Bern to Geneva, although 1 January 1902 is regarded as the official birth date of Swiss Federal Railways. In the meantime, the trains were run by the Swiss Confederation on behalf of the private companies.
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.
First class compartments were discontinued on 3 June 1956, and second and third class accommodation was reclassified as first and second class.
In 1982 SBB introduced the Taktfahrplan ("clockface timetable"), with trains for certain destinations leaving every 60 minutes, greatly simplifying the timetable.
On December 12, 2004 the first phase of Bahn2000, an ambitious programme to improve the company's services, was put into effect. 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 Federal Railways network was out of service during rush hour and an estimated 200,000 people and 1500 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 4 cable Amsteg-Steinen power line due to construction works. 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 the view of cities and villages in terms of buildings), which is usually only granted to communes, for their extraordinary efforts. The Swiss Federal Railways have many high-class (listed) buildings from well-known architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, Santiago Calatrava or 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 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.
Read more about this topic: Swiss Federal Railways
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