Thread by @dominicstucki

New year - new timetable.
During the last weeks, I updated and extended my 🇨🇭swiss tram network stats. Thought I'd share it here. Ready to dive into some numbers? 🚈🔢
#SwissTramStats

1️⃣ General stats

The number of cities with tram network remains unchanged: 4.
➡️Genève (since 1862)
➡️Zürich (since 1882)

#SwissTramStats

➡️Bern (since 1890)
➡️Basel (since 1895)

📷️ 1: t-mizo (CC BY 2.0)
📷️ 2: Alexandre Prevot (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Two more cities will be added to the list in this decade!

Zürich and Basel are by far the largest two networks with lines far beyond the city limits.
#SwissTramStats

A speciality of Switzerland's tram networks is, that most of them are run by more than one operator. In fact, in all cities except Genève, there is more than one company running trams.
#SwissTramStats

Within the two years since the last update, two new routes have been opened. The line 14 extension to Bernex near Genève and the second phase of the 13.1 km long «Limmattalbahn» LRT line in the Zürich network.
#SwissTramStats

↪️ For an in-depth review of the Limmattalbahn, check this thread:

Thanks to the Limmattalbahn, Zürich overtook Genève in the network growth ranking. But considering that Genève only had one old, run-down 8km tram line left in the late Eighties, the numbers are impressive nevertheless.
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Two of the only three (?) international tram networks are in Switzerland: Genève and Basel. The Basel network connects three countries and three Swiss cantons!
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For the fans of colours and numbers, here's an overview of all lines and numbers. All four cities use a colour code, but only Zürich and Genève are consistently using the colours on vehicles and all media. 1 is the lowest, 21 the highest route number.
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2️⃣ Line details

Most lines run every 7-8 minutes during the day, but there are variances. Bern and Genève run some lines more frequently, in Zurich we see more departures on the lines 5 and 6 towards the Universities at peak hours.
#SwissTramStats

On the other hand, Bern and Genève operate tram lines in the city centre with less than 8tph. These complement more frequent lines (Genève) or serve short routes (Bern).
In Basel + Zurich, only routes outside the city in less populated areas have less than 8tph.
#SwissTramStats

The shortest line is 3 in Bern, a radial route which ends at the main station. The longest line with an impressive 26km is Basel's 10, a cross-city route which extends far out to the countryside.
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Does the shortest line also have the shortest journey time? Yes, at least for the shortest three and the longest two on the list. Genève's line 18 needs 52 minutes for 13km "only".
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The number of stops correlates of course with line length, but that the top of the ranking for shortest lines and for the least stops looks exactly the same still surprises me.
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At the other end of the list, things look a bit more interesting, as new lines pop up.
If you love the souhd of a tram accelerating or opening tram doors, Basel's line 10 is the place for you to go. 😉
#SwissTramStats

3️⃣ Commercial speeds

This brings us to the more interesting part. Designing a good tram system is always a trade-off between high commercial speeds and good accessibility (high number of stops). So let's see, how Switzerland's tram networks do.
#SwissTramStats

First, a look at the extremes: The fastest tram lines are either modern LRT systems (Zürich's line 12 and 20) or older conversions, where a regional railway was integrated into a tram network (Basel's 10).
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If you want to look at classic tram lines only, it looks like this: 7 (ZH) and 2 (BS) have some separated "high speed" sections and a rather direct route through the city centres, but Bern's 8 is a surprise to me.
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To achieve such speeds despite medium stop density and long street running sections, you typically need good tram priority at intersections and a clever tram-first street design, as for example on the relatively new parts of the route towards Brünnen Westside.
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On the other end, we find our old friend No. 3 in Bern, and two other relatively short lines: Zürich's mountainous and winding line 6 and the 15 in Genève. The latter is interesting: Despite a stop density of 0.37km, it's very slow.
#SwissTramStats

The 15 runs mostly in the city centre with a high amount of passengers, many intersections and thus a lot of conflicts with other traffic. I wonder how good tram priority is there...
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4️⃣ Stop density

Too many stops make trams painfully slow. No problem at all with this on the lines shown here. Again Zürich's modern Glattalbahn LRT and two converted regional lines (10 in Basel and 6 in Bern) with >50% of the route on the former railway routes.
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How to build new tram lines? Go have a look at Genève! The completely new line 14 and the half-new 18 both don't bother with stopping to much. Basel's line 2 owes its high commercial speed to the low stop density.
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You don't have to walk far to the next stop if you follow Basel's 16, the already familiar mini-line 3 in Bern and – interestingly – Zürich's line 4, despite a rather new LRT-ish part towards Altstetten.
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5️⃣ Comparison of networks

Now we have all we need to plot the main graph. It shows commercial speed and mean stop density of all tram lines in Switzerland. Tram lines above the regression line have speeds above average in relation to their stop density.
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Note the two outliers in the top right corner: Basel's line 10 and Zürich's 12 which we know already from the mean speed and stop density high scores.

Let's break it down per network.
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🟦 Zürich in general has a pretty high stop density. Most lines are between 15 and 17 km/h and one stop every 0.35-0.40km. 10, 12 and 20 run on separated LRT infrastructure for parts or even all the line. The 7 shows an exceptionally low stop density...
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... and benefits from the 2.5 km Schwamendingen tram tunnel (📷️).

Line 5 and 6 are the steep, winding mountain lines, have a large portion of the line in the centre and cross several important intersection, which all makes them slow.
#SwissTramStats

Bern's trams are – astonishingly, as Bern is considered to be a "slow" city – relatively fast. Except for the short line 3, slowest of all, and the 6 with moderate speeds for an integrated former railway (possibly due to single track and large city centre part).
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Basel has probably the fastest network with nearly all the lines above the regression curve. Stop density is comparably low. Many of Basel's lines benefits from a light-rail-like infrastructure on the outer parts of the network, built in the early 1900s!
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Examples are lines 2/6 to Riehen and 14 to Pratteln. The lines 10, 11 and 17 are former interurban trams or railways, integrated into the tram network in the 1980s, combined with double tracking all the lines.
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Genève... well, we have a little problem here, as you can see here. Even if a better part of the network was newly built within the last 30 years, the lines are painfully slow. And this despite the low stop density and some very good infrastructure.
#SwissTramStats

One problem is of course the notoriously congested city centre, but also mean speeds on the new sections are not very high. Look for example at the northern branch of lines 14 and 18 - perfect! What more do you want as infrastructure? But they're still slow...
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Without knowing the real causes, I suspect too much padding in the timetables and improvable priority at intersections. Anyone from Genève can enlighten me?
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Also interesting: Comparison between my lasts stats from 2021 and the 2023 timetable. As you can see from the regression curve, the LRT parts of the network became faster (mainly due to the new Limmattalbahn), but the inner city sections slower!
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Speeds seem to have decreased mainly in Basel, which becomes clear when we plot just the Basel lines from 2021 and 2023. It seems that they added 1 or 2 minutes of additional padding to every line! What happened here?
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To round it all up, summary on network level. Basel is the fastest overall Network. If you look at classic trams only, Bern takes the crown. Genève is slowest - I hope that this will improve in the future, as the rest of their tram plans are really promising!
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That's it for now. Maybe there's a little bonus round coming in the afternoon. 😉
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Oh, before I forget - sources:
- Official timetables 2023 from the operator's websites
- Line lengths measured with brouter.de
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Oops, as @AufGleis13 pointed out, I forgot to include Basels's peak hour lines in the line colour slide. So here's the correct one - sorry Basel! 🙂
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#SwissTramStats, bonus round

Tried to break the lines down into sections which are classified either as "classic" tram parts or LRT-like sections and new lines since 2000. This is not very scientific and of course highly debatable. But it will do for an overview. Let's go. ⤵️

You can see, that "classic" tram sections are a quite uniform group. It seems to be very difficult to reach mean speeds over 16 km/h on these. The non-"classic" sections are much more diverse, I'll split them into groups later. But first, the classics.
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Basel's line 17 between Heuwaage and Wiesenplatz has the highest stop density of all analysed sections. Linie 8, running in the same direction, is also affected by this.
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We already talked about the low speeds of Genève's network. Here you can see, that the central section is particularly slow. Funny enough, the last remainig old line, the 12, crosses the centre the fastest!
📷️ Guillanst (CC BY-SA 4.0)
#SwissTramStats

Basel's 21, the only tangential line, is particularly fast as it avoids the city centre. Bern's 8 probably benefits, again, from good street design and priority at intersections and Zürich's 7 is described by @pdfguru here ⬇️.

#SwissTramStats

Now for the non-"classics": In the top right corner, we find the former railway lines, converted to run into the city centre as tram later. Here, we find the highest speeds and the largest stop distances.
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Also quite fast: Basel's early 1900s "LRT", the sections Zeughaus-Pratteln (14) and Badischer Bahnhof-Riehen (6, 2). They of course have been modernised throughout the years, but still benefit from good alignment choices 100 years ago.
📷️: Kurt Rasmussen
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Zürich's Glattalbahn LRT from 2006-2010 is the fastest modern system. With 100% separated tracks and even some bridges and tunnels across obstacles, it is - not only because of the speed - probably the best tram extension ever built in Switzerland.
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At the other end of Zürich, we find the Limmattalbahn LRT, opened 2022. First phase (2) keeps up with the Glattalbahn, but the second phase sections (Altstetten-Flurhof and Schlieren-Killwangen) are significantly slower.
#SwissTramStats

This is probably due to the more difficult alignment often in the middle of busy roads, more stops, some street-running sections and a few nasty 90° curves.
Map: Limmattalbahn.ch
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Some sections have been built roughly between the 60s and 90s. On one hand the converted Basel interurban trams to Dornach and Aesch (10, 11), on the other hand three completely new lines in Zürich: The Hardturm-Werdhölzli branch (17) and Tram Schwamendingen (7,9)
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They share similar profiles. All have separated tracks and a stop about every 0.4-0.5km. Tram Schwamendingen lines additionally benefit from the 2.5km tram tunnel, originally intended for the never built Zürich metro. Thread here:



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This leaves us with the rest of the new lines. Bern's Tram Bern West (7, 8) is mostly a classic, street running line. Bern shows us, what is possible with new street-running lines. Speeds up to 20 km/h!
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Compared to this, the fully separated Tram Zürich West (4) is even slower! Probably it just stops too much and the suffers from the slow line speed under the Hardbrücke due to the bad visibility.
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We already talked about Genève, so let me point out Basel's 3 between Burgfelderhof and Saint-Louis. Good stop distances, but painfully slow. Why this? Well, look at the map. Eight 90° curves in less than 3km!
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This made me wonder: Can you "buy" higher speeds? Well, to a certain extent yes. Especially above 20km/h there seems to be kind of a correlation between construction costs and mean speeds. Also obvious: Zürich builds the most expensive but fastest lines.
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Here in more details.
⚠️ Please note that data availability and data quality on construction costs in not very good, so that the figures showed here are more kind of an approximation. Especially, it's often unclear whether road construction costs are included.
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And the road part can get expensive! As soon as you need to grade separate road traffic to get a tram across an intersection, things can get really nasty. As shown here by Tram Wankdorf and TCMC 3rd phase, which both required a road underpass to be built.
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So much for the bonus round. As some of you missed the Forchbahn, here is the modified Zürich chart including the S18.
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One last but important thing: Yes, speed is a criteria for a good tram/LRT. But by far not the only one. So please don't make the mistake to judge tram/LRT projects by mean speed only. 🙏 Sometimes, there are good arguments for one more stop or curve. 😊
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Many more things are important factors, but are difficult to measure in numbers. Like, for example, the influence of a well designed tram on the neighborhood and urban development.
(📷️ not Swiss, obviously 😉)
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That's it for this year's #SwissTramStats! Thanks for reading!
All my charts are CC BY-NC 4.0, so share and use them, if you like. The same thread also exists over on Mastodon, where it is accessible for everyone, even without 🐦️ account:
urbanists.social/@dominicstucki…

Bonus video of a swiss tram from my walk this afternoon, for everyone who made it to the end of this thread.
#SwissTramStats

#SwissTramStats, Addendum:

Check out the awesome #GermanTramStats by @Tramhendi:

The typical East German Networks seems to be faster than the typical Swiss network. I guess better alignment and higher stop distance are key here. How good is tram prioritisation at traffic lights in these cities?

Recently, I pointed out that the 2nd phase of the #Limmattalbahn is slower than other new lines. To get a closer look, I logged my recent journey with my phone's GPS logger. Again not very reliable, but ok-ish for an overview.
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This is the speed/time diagram of the central section from Schlieren to Spreitenbach.
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Most of the slow sections are actually slow by design (line routing). But the good news is, there seem to be a few things to optimise
➡️ Fine tuning of tram priority at🚦
➡️ Timetable
➡️ Dwell times
❓️Technical improvements (e.g. faster speed through ⚡️ change?)
#SwissTramStats

For comparison: log of a journey over 1st phase of #Limmattalbahn. This diagram looks like it should look on a modern LRT. Stop – line speed – stop.
Interestingly, the maximum line speed of 60 km/h was rarely reached, even though we've been 5 mins late.
#SwissTramStats