Swiss national railway company, SBB, is proud of its punctuality record: overall, by its own estimate, 92.5 percent of trains circulating in Switzerland are on time — among the best rates in Europe.

SBB explains that “a train is considered on time if it reaches its destination with less than three minutes’ delay.”  

One of the reasons why SBB falls short of a 100-percent punctuality rate, especially in certain regions, is that some trains arrive from abroad late, disrupting connections on the Swiss side of the border.

That is why SBB is negotiating with Germany, Italy, and Austria to minimise frequents delays, which impact rail traffic in Switzerland as well. 

These are the details:

Germany

German’s national railway, the Deutsche Bahn (DB), is considered the worst offender, with its frequently tardy trains messing up SBB’s carefully coordinated  timetable.

Since so much traffic from Germany is consistently late, Swiss rail authorities regularly stop trains arriving more than 10 minutes late at the border, redirecting passengers onto Swiss trains so as not to clog up the network with incoming delays. 

In order to alleviate these bottlenecks, SBB no longer wants to include some German trains in the Swiss timetable, particularly the ones arriving from Munich to Zurich via St. Gallen.

READ ALSO: Why Swiss transport authorities want to ban German trains

Italy

Regarding negotiations with its southern neighbour, SBB wants Switzerland-bound trains from Milano Centrale to depart earlier, so as to have more time to compensate for possible delays on the Simplon axis.

According to SBB, punctuality on this line “declined during last summer, which is why we are working on improvements together with our Italian partners.”

Austria

As for Austrian Railways (ÖBB), the SBB said it is “not satisfied” with the lack of punctuality of long-distance trains from that country, but it has not revealed the content of the negotiations with its Austrian counterpart.

What about France?

The punctuality of French TGV trains is (surprisingly) satisfactory to the Swiss.