The rapid development of public transport has radically changed the lives of Roman Swiss You will see now how a railway timetable changed a city, and why it took just 330 meters of rails to reshape the entire region. (Journalist) If there is one thing the Swiss revere, it is their trains. The train is part of the landscape and almost of the DNA of the homo helveticus. (Christophe) I received my first electric train, I was about 8 years old, and then it is a passion that has grown like that ever since then. I like working on my little trains in the evening, it relaxes me. (Journalist) Christophe Beuret defines himself as a railfan, an addict of the world of railways, when not playing with his toy trains, he watches the new models to photograph them. On his website, thousands of his pictures of trains, of stations, and of his paintings of trains, of course. Christophe's life is on track, he obviously takes the daily train to work. (Christophe) So in general, I look out and then on most lines I look when such and such bifurcations come or in such a station I know I can ... usually see this type of train, etc. (Reporter) And guess where he works. At the Federal Office of Transport, where he is responsible for rail traffic. Today, more than 9,000 trains per day circulate in Switzerland providing 80,000 connections, and carrying more than one million people per day. And the best is that the train ballet is repeated identically throughout the day, it is called the interval timetable. (Christophe) An interval timetable is a schedule that is repeated every hour in the same manner. That is to say that if there is a train going from one place from one city to another at a certain time, one hour later, we will have the same train that goes from the same city to this other city. (Journalist) -What is the advantage for the user? -For the user, it is extremely simple to know the schedule and know that if he missed his train, an hour or half an hour later it depends on the lines, he will have the same connection. In Switzerland the first drafts of interval timetables were in the Zurich region, then the interval timetable for the all network was introduced in the summer-hour of 1982. (Journalist) To assess the path taken, imagine an employee who lives in Freiburg, but works in Bern. In 1964, between six and ten o'clock, there were eight trains at disposal but only four where direct and if he missed the one at six hours he had to wait 1 hour and 4i minutes for the next direct one. As for the schedule, they were so irregular that they were almost impossible to memorize. In 1982, our employee had twelve trains between six and ten o'clock. There are six direct, two more than in 1964 and above all the interval timetable was set, and wasmuch easier to remember. Today, after the great rail reform of 2000 there are twenty Freiburg-Berne trains between six and ten o'clock including twelve direct and, above all, all trains are clocked, there is no need to look at one's watch. It did look like much, but this rail mutation has much more transformed the face of Switzerland that many political reforms. Take Yverdon. Until the 80s, the capital of Northern Vaud was known for its thermal waters and its industries. The workshops SBB, the company famous Paillard that manufactured typewriters and cameras, or the Leclanché plant. It's been ages since we stopped making batteries at Leclanché. Like others, the factory closed, the premises now house artists and artisans. André Jaccoud spent here nearly a half century, he joined Leclanché at the age of 20 in 1964. (André) The majority of people came to work by walk and much more by cycling. And then, there was no motor vehicles except the vehicles of the company. There was the car of the boss who had the right to come in, but otherwise no other vehicle. At that time, companies like SBB, Paillard and Leclanché all came out at the same time, the end of the workday was all at the same time, then downtown there was suddenly everything bicycle flood was coming in. (Journalist) -There were traffic jams, then? -This was not quite as in China, but there were still some problems and in any case there was every day a traffic officer to ensure people to come out, even if there were few vehicles. -For Bikes? -For Bikes. (Reporter) The geographer Pierre Dessemontet lives in Yverdon, He is a specialist in mobility, he was very interested in the life of Yverdon of the 50s and 60s. (Pierre) These lives really are focused at the local level because transport is much more painful and difficult than today. There are few cars, relatively few trains, it is quite expensive. Same for the holiday, people move once a year to go camping or to go to the seaside or in another canton but otherwise lives are very local. Local companies are very active and in fact all social life is moving around the same point: the city where you live for about two kilometers. In a city like Yverdon people get into the factory at 16, come out to 64, and in-between they kept their jobs for 40, 45 years. And so it allows you to organize all life around this focal point that is the workplace. We live nearby, our social life is nearby. (Journalist) Things are starting to move in the 80 and the train will take part in the metamorphosis of the city. On May the 28th 1989, Yverdon is connected to the network of intercity trains. Lausanne is 22 minutes away, Geneva 46, and the syndicate is delighted to place himself the signpost. Cycling workers frome once were gradually replaced by a new population : the commuters. (Radio) It's 7:00, information ... (Journalist) Sophie Recordon attacks her breakfast and reads her mail. The day begins, it will be long, because Sophie works in Geneva. Several times a week she finds at the station the little people of commuters from Yverdon. (Sophie) It is the platform of people who go to Geneva the "Geneva Pendulum," and in front are the commuters who go to Lausanne, so on a three, four minutes intervall we see each other and say hi from the dock for here. (Journalist) Today in Switzerland, 2.7 million people depart daily to work in another municipality than where they live. (Sophie) There is a pretty special atmosphere, that is to say that it is a very quiet atmosphere, people are in a kind of meditation before the excitement of the office. During the trip I began to prepare answers to my emails and then yeah I just started working, I work really. -So It's not wasted time for you? No, not at all, no no, it allows me to do, I would say, the bridge between the office and home. (Journalist) Living in Yverdon despite an office located almost 100 kilometers away, it is Sophie's choice. I grew up in a small village not far from here there, in the Jura, and I did my gym in Yverdon, so after my studies in Geneva after working 8 years in Geneva it's true that I needed to come back a little to the roots. (Journalist) 46 minutes after the departure, the intercity from Yverdon enters Cornavin Station. Sophie Recordon completes a trip she will redo tonight in reverse. So here the bus number nine just came in and then I have about 20 minutes to cross the Mont Blanc bridge to get to my workplace. -Yeah it is a sacred journey. -Yeah. -I Think it's there. -Yeah, thank you goodbye. -Good bye have a good day. -Thank you. (Journalist) In Switzerland 10% of commuters as Sophie put over an hour to go to work In addition to the train, highways opened in the 2000s from Berne to Yverdon and Neuchâtel, boosted mobility. In 1980, there were only 20% of Yverdon who took work out of town and there were only20% of jobs in Yverdon that were occupied by people from the outside. In 2012, 60% of Yverdon were working elsewhere and 65% of Yverdon workstations are occupied by outsiders. In a few years, it is a radical change. It has enabled a new population to considered that Yverdon could be a place where one could live while keeping jobs in the Lake Geneva area. -And the population here increases. -It Increases strongly. Yverdon-les-Bains has remained at around 20 000 inhabitants for a long time, between the 60s and the 2000s, but in the recent years there is a strong growth of the population, so much that curently it approches 30 000 inhabitants. It is over 29 000 in 2013. (Reporter) It also happens sometimes that an average transportation transforms, not just a city, but downright an entire region. Take the example of the LEB, the Lausanne-Echallens-Bercher A venerable small local train that as run for 141 years 23 kilometers of the Vaud countryside. Initially, the wheelbarrow, as it is nicknamed, was mainly used for transporting area farmers and their products that would sell in the capital markets in Lausanne. Cristophe Jemelin is a geographer, he worked at TL the Lausanne transport, on which the LEB depends. At first, why Bercher? The line starts there for industrial reasons. At the end of the nineteenth century there was a very large factory of Nestle who was here and which justified that until 1912 most of the traffic was a freight traffic. (Journalist) For years, the barrow has carted tons of milk. In 1971, the LEB relinquishes freight transport for the only benefit of travelers. In 1995, a milestone year, we finally demolish the old terminal, the old station of the purest provisional western style since 1873. But it was in 2000 that the LEB destiny will really tumble. The line is extended to 330 meters of tunnel from Chauderon up to the Flon station in the heart of Lausanne. The venerable Lausanne-Echallens-Bercher is found just in front the new Lausanne metro. And that changes everything. The LEB has been connected, somewhere, to the national grid, Flon station is considered as a nearly national network station. There are tens of thousands of passengers transiting each day between the M2 and the LEB, and in one minute of M" we are connected to the Lausanne station so it has really opened all the majority of the Vaud canton to the national rail network. (Journalist) 330 small meters more of rail and since the constructions follow one another throughout the course. Just between Cheseaux and Romanel is expected in the coming years an increase in population equivalent to the city of Morges. Just up the pastoral station of Ripes. Here you will have several hundred people in this cornfield. Here probably you will have a public transport interface with the post bus. This is one of many areas that will know this very strong growth, are expected several hundred new residents along each of the stops of the LEB. (Journalist) At 15 kilometers of Lausanne, Echallens. 2,000 inhabitants in 1977, 5500 and today it is not done. Here too, sites are increasing. With the LEB, Echallens is only 28 minutes away from Flon. If I tell you that Echallens is a suburb of Lausanne, do I upset you? -If you say a suburb of Lausanne, yes. (Laughs) Nah, you did not really vexed me, but that does not correspond to reality and I would say that Echallens is, of course, in the basin of influence ... -Of Lausanne. -Of the capital. And by developing a center, we took it in consideration. -So this is not the suburbs, but that is still really near Lausanne in fact. -Absolutely, But so is the entire area. (Reporter) And when the population increases, the attendance of the LEB follows. It carried one million passengers per year in 1960, 3.2 million in 2013, and 12 million are planned for 2020. That means 4 times more than today, with longer trains, cadences every 10 minutes if not every 7 ½ minutes, if not every 5 minutes, there are several scenarios underway. (Reporter) The LEB is embedded in the same rat race as other public transport. The more the supply grows, the more the demand increases. In your opinion, how far can we go? Is that in 20 years we will have cadancies every 5 minutes, a train every 5 minutes? I do not hope we will move that far to need a train every 5 minutes. Currently, the rate per hour, the half hour rate on the mainline network is already huge. The question we should ask is: do we really have to move so much?
