Swiss Federal Railways (, SBB; , CFF; , FFS) is the national railway company of Switzerland.
The company was founded in 1902 and is headquartered in Bern. It used to be a government institution, but since 1999 it has been a special stock corporation whose shares are held by the Swiss Confederation and the Swiss cantons. It is the largest rail and transport company of Switzerland; it operates on most standard gauge lines of the Swiss railway network. It also heavily collaborates with most other transport companies of the country, such as the BLS, one of its main competitors, or (SOB), to provide fully integrated timetables with cyclic schedules.
SBB was ranked first among national European rail systems in the 2017 European Railway Performance Index for its intensity of use, quality of service, and safety rating. While many rail operators in continental Europe have emphasised the building of high-speed rail, SBB has invested in the reliability and quality of service of its conventional rail network, on both national and regional scales. In addition to passenger rail, SBB operates cargo and freight rail service through its subsidiary SBB Cargo, and has large real estate holdings in Switzerland.
Name The company is commonly referred to by the initials of its three official names, in German, French and Italian – defined by federal law SR/RS 742.31 (SBBG/LCFF/LFFS) Art. 2 §1 – either as SBB CFF FFS, or used separately. The official English abbreviation is SBB.
While the official Romansh name, (VFS), can be found in federal laws and associated documents, as well as Romansh-language media, it is not used by the company itself.
Organisation Swiss Federal Railways is divided into three divisions and eight groups. The divisions manage the relevant operational businesses. These divisions are: Passenger traffic Infrastructure Real estate
The former division Cargo became an independent group company at the beginning of 2019.
SBB's eight groups manage the company and support the operational business of the divisions with service and support functions. These groups are: Finance HR IT Communications Corporate Development Safety & Quality Legal and Compliance Supply Chain Management
The corporation is led in an entrepreneurial manner. A performance agreement between Swiss Federal Railways and the Swiss Confederation defines the requirements and is updated every four years. At the same time the compensation rates per train and track-kilometre are defined.
A German subsidiary, SBB GmbH, is responsible for passenger traffic in Germany. It operates the Wiesentalbahn, the Seehas services and services of Schaffhausen S-Bahn. Other subsidiaries are Thurbo, RegionAlps, AlpTransit Gotthard AG, Cisalpino, and TiLo (the latter in conjunction with Italian authorities). Swiss Federal Railways hold significant shares of the Zentralbahn (ZB) and Lyria SAS.
The (SBB Historic) was founded in 2002. This foundation takes care of historic rolling stock and runs a technical library in Bern, document and photographic archives, and the SBB poster collection.
Figures
All figures from 2024: Length of railway network in standard gaugePercentage electrified routes100%Employees35,569Passengers carried per day1.39 millionPassenger-kilometre per inhabitant and yearStations open to passengers801Customer punctuality93.2% of all passengers reached their destination – measured from departure station including any necessary changes – with less than three minutes of delay (either two or one minute delay, or on time)Customer-weighted connection punctuality98.9%Freight per year43,1 million tonsStations with freight traffic193Railway tunnels311Railway tunnels total lengthLongest tunnel (Gotthard Base Tunnel) world recordRailway bridges4,925Railway bridges total lengthElectric multiple units (fixed compositions of power cars and coaches)656Power cars108Mainline locomotives543 (passenger services: 322 / freight services: 221)Shunting locomotives224 (38/75/ infrastructure: 111)Shunting tractors245 (18/24/203)Passenger coaches1,982Freight wagons4,671Hydroelectric plants8Electricity produced and procured3063 GWhElectricity used for railway operations2,275 GWhProportion of traction current from renewable sources100% The Swiss Federal Railways rail network is totally electrified. Its last non-electrified railway line (Etzwilen–Singen) was closed to regular traffic in 2004 and it is now a heritage railway.
The metre gauge Brünigbahn was SBB's only non-standard gauge line, until it was out-sourced and merged with the Luzern-Stans-Engelberg-Bahn to form the Zentralbahn, in which SBB holds shares.
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.
Later that year, the Federal Assembly approved the purchase of Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB) to operate trains on behalf of the federal government. The first train running on the account of the Swiss Confederation ran during the night of New Year's Eve 1900/New Year's Day 1901 from Zurich via Bern to Geneva, and received a ceremonial welcome upon arriving in Bern. SBB's management board was first formed in mid-1901, and added the Schweizerische Nordostbahn (NOB) to the system on 1 January 1902. This date is now observed as the "official" birthday of SBB.SBB history page
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.
The Gotthard Railway was added in 1909, the Jura-Neuchâtelois in 1913, the Tösstal Railway in 1918, the Seetal Railway in 1922 and the Uerikon–Bauma Railway in 1948. The Brünig railway came with the Jura–Simplon Railway, and the Lake Constance fleet with the Swiss Northeastern Railway.
The new SBB had a great deal of renovation to do. Accounting was centralized from the start and technical standards were unified. The old administrations of the former private railways were placed, through district railway councils, under the general directorate, the board of directors and thus the federal authorities. Except for the lines of the Gotthard Railway and part of the Jura–Simplon network, the installations were in poor condition. The purchase prices exceeded the estimate by 20%, although the estimated real value of the installations was 10% below it. More powerful locomotives with higher axle loads required extensive work on the infrastructure, and the renovation of large stations and the doubling of lines were costly. As a new line, the SBB completed in 1906 the Simplon line begun by the Jura–Simplon Railway, with the Simplon Tunnel, then the longest tunnel in the world (second bore 1922). The SBB began to replace their rolling stock, made up of many small series, with standard classes.
In the interwar period, the railway administration was centralized and the network electrified. The administrative apparatus, soon mocked as Direktorenhypertrophie (an excess of directors), was slimmed down: the number of board members was cut by three quarters and the number of general directors halved. The former Central Railway administration in Basel was attached to the Lucerne district directorate in 1923, and the St. Gallen district to the Zurich district directorate. Before the First World War, the electrical companies Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (MFO) and Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC) had each converted an SBB line to electric operation at their own risk. For the further electrification of the network, the SBB at first adopted the three-phase technology of the Simplon line rather than the more promising single-phase alternating current technology developed by MFO, which was preferred only under the impact of the coal shortage during the First World War. Despite the unstable economy of the interwar years and growing debt, electrification was pushed ahead: the SBB built their own power plants (Piotta, Amsteg, Barberine), commissioned new types of locomotives and sped up the construction of overhead lines. Around the middle of the century, 99.5% of the SBB network was electrified, a degree of electrification unique in the world.
The federal act on the SBB of 1944 allowed a one-time debt relief, the creation of endowment capital and restructuring measures, which led to good operating results until the end of the 1960s. Despite large investments in junction and marshaling yards and in the modernization of lines and rolling stock, the railways' share of traffic fell rapidly compared with road traffic, which received two to five times the public funds provided for the railways. From 1987, additional subsidies for reduced fares, the clock-face timetable, the Rail 2000 project and the S-Bahn networks allowed the railways to win back shares of passenger traffic. In the same period, local freight services were drastically reduced. More emphasis was placed on combined rail–road freight transport, for example with the parcel company Cargo Domizil from 1985 (sold in 1996), and on the expansion of the transit routes, with the New Rail Link through the Alps (NRLA) from 1992 and planned cooperation in transport with the Italian State Railways. The revised Railway Act of 1996 released the Confederation and the SBB from obligations in regional transport. In sparsely populated areas for which no cantonal or municipal funds could be made available, this led to cuts after a decade of expanding services.
First class compartments were discontinued on 3 June 1956, and second and third class accommodation was reclassified as first and second class, respectively.
On 1 January 1999 the Swiss Federal Railway has been excluded from the Federal Administration and became a fully state-owned (the federal state owns 100% of all shares) limited company regulated by public law ().
In 1982, SBB introduced the (clock-face schedule), with trains for certain destinations leaving every 60 minutes, greatly simplifying the timetable.
On 12 December 2004 the first phase of , an ambitious programme to improve the company's services, was put into effect. The core element was the –– 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 .
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 bridge over the tracks to provide better access to the platforms and the city centre.