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In spring 2006, I managed to take a close photo on the construction works of the first full-size Metro in Switzerland (see pic). The Lausanne metro line m2 was opened last October, so let’s have a look at the results via Flickr.

I am not implying here that a full-size metro is a clear sign of development and wealth, or that it would necessarily increase the quality of public transport. The real goal is to provide fast and comfortable transport options for the commuters, be it an efficient tram network (Basel, Zürich) excellent bike infrastructure (Gröningen, Copenhagen), or any combination. Metro-fetish per se is not a good thing. But this line seems to be a smart project.

In fact, the city never had a “regular” metro, but they do have a suburban line with a city centre terminus built in 1872, a light rail/supertram branded as Metro 1 connecting university campuses with the centre ville and another main line train station, and they used to have a cog-wheel railway (below on the left), which has now been lengthened and converted to rubber-tire metro.

Rubber tire railway was first pioneered in Paris after WWII. The idea (which sounds a bit odd at first, as it is combining the inefficiency of road transport with the constraints of a fixed track, similar to the trolley bus) proved to be efficient on the congested Paris lines, because the higher friction of tires allow higher acceleration, shorter breaking distance and therefore higher train frequencies. – In Lausanne, the challenge was the hilly terrain: the extreme elevationof as high as 12% were previously made possible only using cog wheels or cable cars.

For those who like useless world records: this is the steepest metro line in the World, Lausanne has just become the World’s smallest city with a full size metro system (next being Rennes), furthermore it is claimed to be the most modern metro system.

The new subway uses the technology of Paris Métro lines 1 and especially 14, there is no driving seat and stations are all having platform doors. The mostly underground line is 6 km long with 14 stations, end-to-end duration of 20 minutes and a frequency of 3 minutes in peak hours.

More pics on Lausanne rail transit (click here if you can’t see below):

Photos by Nelson Minar, fr.zil, hublera and me.

The picture on the left (click for large versions) is Lausanne Main Station in Switzerland, with the Swiss Alps in the background. I have spent half a year here as an exchange student and sometimes I feel like going back again to study, windsurf, ski, and, as you might have guessed, to take a train to the alps to go cycling.

The picture on the right, however, is the Budapest Déli railway station, from where I live now.

At first sight, it feels great to see such similarity in two places where I love to live, but I can’t ignore the striking difference in the quality of the rail infrastructure. I wish it wasn’t a good metaphor for the “State of the Nation” too.

Can you guess now, how many pages long the Swiss rail timetable book is for the new season just started? One last help is that the Hungarian timetable book is 815 pages long, and as such a heavy product, is only scarcely available, as described here (in Hungarian).

Well, as you can see from the picture, the swiss timetable is a stunning 1 page, which is some 99.98% less.

from sma-partner.ch, click here for large version (PDF)

I am exaggerating, yes; of course it is also available in book-like formats, and it is in fact an A3 page (so be it 8 regular pages), and there are a couple of exceptions for which you have to refer to a slightly longer document.

Switzerland, of course, has a denser network and more frequent departures than Hungary and most other countries in the World. The reason it is still possible to describe all national departure times on one single network map is because virtually all trains follow a repetitive schedule of 60 or sometime 120 minutes. This is called Integraler Taktfahrplan (ITF) and the non-integrated (i.e. with bus services) version were even tested on some lines of Hungary until December 2008.

Did I mention that less is more?

ITF is not only easy to map and hence easy to remember, but its additional cost over traditional timetables is surprisingly small, due to its high efficiency. But more on that later, now please just have a look at the Swiss map (PDF) and enjoy.

my post-Lausanne pics are/will be available at

http://picasaweb.google.com/daniel.sparing .

there my name is, in the new edition of Lonely Planet: Switzerland! Yihaa.

ez volt a hatodik nagy túra, egyben az első amire nem felejtettem el naptejet vinni. ennek ellenére a tervezettnél előbb fel kellett adnom a hőség miatt, kb napszúrást kaptam minimum (a szakasz amit kihagytam végig lejtett volna de akkose bírtam már)

a Furkapass az Alpok legmagasabb (nem csak gyalog járható) hágói közé tartozik, de ez mondjuk nem jelenti azt h a legnehezebb is, mer 1400 m-ről kezdődik, tehát szintben pont annyi mint a korábbi Jura vagy Zermatt túrák.

ezekbe a vagonokba lehet behajtani kocsival és átvisz a hágó alatt vonattal fél óra alatt (mer a hágó csak májustól októberig van nyitva)

ez a Jungfraujoch-vonat, Európa legmagasabb vasútállomása, 3000 m felett, vmi 100 euró a jegy.

barométerünk, a currys szendvics

az alpok leggyakoribb állatfaja

sztem ez az egyik legjobb kép eddig de Juditnak nem tetszett:

map from veloland.intermaps.ch

more picts | még több kép:

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Campione d’Italia, Olaszországhoz tartozó falu melyet Svájc vesz körbe:

ez is Campione, a kaszinó

még több kép | more picts: