We recently moved near Rolle and my daughter rides the train to Versoix, my husband has sometimes commuted on it, etc. After everything we heard about Swiss trains always being precisely on time, we are more than a little disillusioned. My daughter has started leaving the house 30 minutes earlier because the train she was taking made her late for school twice last week. Since school started, she has been late about 6 times.

My husband had similar experiences a few times, and the one time he and I took the train to Lausanne, our train back was canceled.

I hear that the Geneva-Lausanne track is particularly crowded, so maybe this is a local issue. Just curious if people are experiencing late trains in other parts of the country?

The public transit in Switzerland is excellent, but also nowhere near perfect.

I think we've all experience imperfect rail times.

on a side note---how do you personally define 'late' 5 mins? 10 mins? 30 sec? Could be a relative situation.

Also out of all fairly in random events, such 'late' events, although not occuring frequently, can occur 5-6 times in a row. Perhaps your daughter has just experienced some bad luck.

I'd say throughout all my years in CH, I've had about 1 out of 10 trains arrive late. Some were just a few minutes late, some 10+ minutes.

The Cisalpino's tardiness is notorious and there was about a 50/50 chance it would be late.

I'm sorry to hear about your train service. It sounds like they've got some severe problems along your train lines.

My experience has been rather good with SBB, hardly any delays encountered in my region. One of the worst delays I frequently find is at Sargans station ( often up to 40 minutes late half the time but compensated with alternate Regio and PostAuto services ).

This article might be relevant here.

Ever since last September, I ve been using the train regularly for quite some long distances daily

and my experience has been that usually they arrive with 2-5mins delay in long distances..

departures from Zurich are almost always on time whereas they tend to be delayed from Lausanne

The S12 is almost always late, only by about 3 or 4 minutes so I can't really complain about that, but it's broken down twice in the two or so years that I've used it, and I can't count the number of times I've seen the delay creep from 4mins to 7mins to 10 mins to ausgefallen (cancelled).

Normally there is new timetable at the beginning of december - sometimes this prevents the previous years delay issues - sometimes it make it worse.
Every year they try to cram in more trains, but the system is almost full now. I have noticed things getting worse on my journeys recently.

Nowhere near as worse at the UK yet - thank God

May I ask, Have you got a Swiss watch?

Thanks, everyone, I guess these are not isolated incidents. I was not counting 30 seconds as late, but 5 - 10 minutes. And my daughter has a 3 minute connection window in Coppet that she was missing. Or in other situations, the train leaving Coppet would be canceled and she'd wait 30 minutes for the next one to show up.

I'm used to CalTrain, the commuter train that runs from San Jose to San Francisco in California. Not nearly as many trains running on that line, but the frequency of delays we experienced seems comparable.

It will be interesting to see what happens once they juggle schedules in December.

Hi,
I completely agree and share your frustations!
After all I heard about SWISS trains, I am surprised and desapointed.

1.Cost very high, thats swiss, for sure.
2.LEB NEVER on time this week (15-20 delays on average)
3. poor signalisations
4. signs telling when the train will come never works
5. poor information (for ex. when delays a voice say trains are running 5 min late, then nothing: train came 15 min late)
6.timetables hard to understand and incomplete. For example it mentions "sundays a 7 into a circle". That indication is NEVER on the timetable! I looked for the same symbol everywhere it never appears>
7. not frequent services, although I understand not many users on the LEB.
8. System pretty dumb, especially for optionnal stops: during normal time, with the low frequency of LEB trains, everyone stop at every stops...
9. design inside pretty poor, for example the "trash" for cigarets (?) takes some space on the windows seats, and I cant put my legs completely, ok it's not that much but if you have a fatso next to you its difficult..
Edit: 10. Quite lots of stupid kids, etc... LEB let them do anything, this sunday I saw some at the LEB station putting bags on fire. no one cares and poor frequentation. I feel I will have a few conflicts with those dumbs, but LEB has no security or does not attempt to move them away.


etc...
Well other things are good, buses are often, etc... but the LEB simply su.cks!

Can you please tell us simpletons what LEB means, so we know what spot in this banana republic to steer clear of?

It would appear to be a local Lausanne rail company... see http://www.leb.ch/

Expensive ?

Try going from Cornwall to Scotland and back in the UK, first class, buying the ticket on the day of travel. Cost : £1002.-- or approx CHF1700.--

Season ticket in CH for all railways, buses boats, first class CHF 4'800.--

Source : BBC & CFF websites

"Season ticket" sounds a bit misleading. You pay CHF 4'850.- for a whole year. That's more than just a season.

Sorry!
LEB is the name of the train in Lausanne



What? the train in UK 1200pounds something?? We haven't been to the same UK, and we do not talk about 1st class trips, but every day work commutes :P

It was not cheap, for sure, but not that expansive! a month commute from Edin to suburbs like 50km away was like...130pounds? (220 chf?)

Grrr .. held up here ..Tecknau tunnel issues...

http://sbb-him.hafas.de/bin/help.exe...p=false#hfsShm

http://sbb-him.hafas.de/bin/help.exe...p=false#hfsShm

Well don't forget that 1st class in the UK isn't the same as first class here.

I'm just back from the UK and travelled on the Wrexham and Shropshire in the 1st Class. They served us a complementary meal and drinks at our seats, and it wasn't airline style stuff but freshly prepared and really generous portions with real meat on real plates with real cutlery and on a real proper table rather than a wobbly folding one. The attendants were really corteous and profesional and our attendant had only two other tables besides our own to attend to so the service was absolutely first class.

You can't really compare that to Swiss 1st class where the seats are just slightly more comfy and spacious but otherwise its not much better than 2nd class.

Source for the UK fare : BBC website....

1st Class annual ticket, Swindon to London Paddington costs £11'000
(Chf 18'700 approx), my brother buys one !

Could it be the Austrian train? That is Wiener Gemütlichkeit.

Ok, so you take a tiny little train company covering 24 km of the more than 5500 km of the Swiss railroad network and present it as if it were typical for the whole system.

You start your rant stating, "I completely agree and share your frustations!
After all I heard about SWISS trains, I am surprised and desapointed." Then you list all your pet peeves with LEB as if they represented the whole network.

It's only in the last part of your last sentence that you admit that actually your generous ranting is based on observations that comprise only 0.44% of the network: " Well other things are good, buses are often, etc... but the LEB simply su.cks!"

Don't you think you are generalizing a bit too much?