Record passengers travelled on Swiss rail in 2024
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Record passengers travelled on Swiss rail in 2024
The number of people carried by Swiss Federal Railways has never been higher. Last year, 1.39 million passengers travelled daily on long-distance and regional trains.
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At its annual press conference on Thursday, Swiss Railways expressed its satisfaction at the slight increase in annual profit to CHF275 million. Its property and infrasructure units also posted profits, while Cargo International returned to the black. Cargo Switzerland, on the other hand, posted a substantial loss of CHF76 million.
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In the medium term, the state-owned company will need an annual profit of CHF500 million to meet growing demand for further expansion of rail services. The implementation of cost-saving and efficiency measures has curbed the increase in debt.
At CHF12.1 billion, debt is higher than in the previous year, due to investments in rolling stock.
Punctuality improves
The rail network improved its punctuality last year – particularly in French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino. The punctuality of trains from abroad, on the other hand, remains unsatisfactory.
Passengers were more satisfied than last year, despite higher train occupancy rates. Swiss railways reports that, in addition to punctuality, the expansion of the range of season tickets made a contribution.
Conversely, customer satisfaction with domestic cargo services fell. The reasons for this are price increases and lower production due to numerous night-time construction sites, the partial closure of the Gotthard tunnel and staff shortages at the Zurich-Limmattal marshalling yard.
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Swiss railways expansion abroad deemed not worthwhile
Translated from French by DeepL/mga
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