How do we want to use 3800 km of heavy rail network?

The third edition of the Public Transport Planning Forum took place on 19 and 20 June 2024. The excursion day took us to TL in Lausanne and Railcare in Aclens. At the symposium on the second day, we went deeper into the specialist presentations and explored the question: "How do we want to use the 3,800 km of mainline railway network in Switzerland in the future?" Over 100 participants from various railway companies, the planning sector and authorities from both Switzerland and Europe took part.

Forum öV Planung 2024

The videos of the presentations and the image video of the entire two days will follow in 3-4 weeks, the presentation slides are online.

Excursion June 19th 2024

The excursion on Wednesday, 19 June 2024 began in Prilly-Malley with a visit to Transport Public Lausannois, where Christophe Jemelin spoke to us about the current and future development of the service and the relevant small and large projects. In the afternoon, the focus was on freight transport at the "Aclens Hub" of Railcare, Coop's rail freight subsidiary. Philipp Wegmüller gave an up-to-date insight into the current projects and the perspective of an inland freight forwarder with its capacity requirements.

Symposium June 20th 2024 (Program brochure)

  • Moderated by Daniel Eckenstein (frame presentation) and
    "a light-hearted look inbetween" by Claudio Büchel (texts & pictures / video to follow)

  • Welcome address by Nicolas Ecoffey, Head of Corparate Development SBB

  • International expectations and solutions for the use of mainline railway infrastructure with a view from neighbouring countries by

  • A national perspective with freight transport glasses and on the ways in which network infrastructures can or should be regulated and organised by

  • Visions about where mobility in Switzerland could be heading in 2050 and what options are being explored in other countries for the use of full rail transport

    • Annette Antz-Schwarz, Responsable integrated longterm Planning, SBB and
      (presentation german, video to follow)

    • Ariel Jorre de St. Jorre, Transport for Greater Manchester, Strategic Development Manager and
      Simon Coulthard, Network Rail, Head of Light Rail Knowledge & Development
      (presentation english, video to follow)

  • For the last two speeches we will find out how a canton expects the development of public transport and the mainline railway and what conclusions SBB draws from the inputs of the symposium

  • And finally, we switch to a small perspective before continuing the discussions over drinks with

Review 2022.

The railway in the field of tension between increasing demands and scarce resources.

The second edition of the Public Transport Planning Forum took longer than expected to take place. However, we were able to highlight the challenges and solutions facing the rail system over two days in 2022. During the first day's excursion between Othmarsingen (traffic junction), an overview from the locomotive driver's point of view (steering, tools), operations management (BZ Olten) and energy-saving measures at RBS.

After an introduction into the second day by Linus Looser we welcomed 9 speakers to the symposium and closed the day with a panel discussion:

Review 2019.

Does the interval timetable have a future?

The first forum on public transport planning took place in 2019 in Berne and was a collaboration between SBB and Rapperswil University of Applied Sciences HSR. Over the course of 6 presentations, we shed light on the past and future of the interval timetable with the following speakers:

Video Excursion 2022