“Disappointment” in French-speaking Switzerland at the lack of night trains to destinations in southern Europe like Rome or Barcelona.
by jeanpauljh
“Disappointment” in French-speaking Switzerland at the lack of night trains to destinations in southern Europe like Rome or Barcelona.
by jeanpauljh
5 comments
Quite right , Romandie are 2nd class citizens for the SBB
As long as SVP and FDP are in majority, any measures that improve the life of working class or protect the environment are not going to happen. We have already seen significant reduction in the funding of ETH board and SBB, two Crown Jewels of the confederation. Expect more to happen. Taxes will be reduced for the rich and public services will suffer.
Those who talk about reducing taxes so that the rich don’t leave must understand that it is a race to bottom. Every tax cut increases income inequality and paves the road towards feudalism.
As someone from Romandie, the announcement that the Federal Office of Transport intends to subsidise a new night train link to Malmö (of all places) feels like yet another example of how the government simply doesn’t give a shit about my corner of the country.
In addition to spending money on this new Scandinavian night train, [the government also financed the homologation](https://www.news.admin.ch/fr/newnsb/F6z_kZnU06_JTt4uH_kwI) to allow the Giruno trains to operate at higher speeds in Italy. The same trainsets that exclusively operate on international routes from German speaking Switzerland. And it will also finance improvements on restaurant cars on a line to Austria from Zurich.
Would it have been so difficult to offer a single centime in favour of improving train services to France from Geneva?
Night trains are the extremely uneconomical. You need special carriages that have no utilisation during the day. An Airbus A321 carries the same amount of people as one train and can operate six legs a day. If you want to do something about climate change, tax flights and/or their fuels properly so that their external costs are included in the ticket price instead of subsidising night trains.
From the AGEFI, this week translated via deepl
“In 2024, the two Lake Geneva cantons together paid out some 7.5 billion francs in DFI (almost 4.5 billion for Geneva and just over 3 billion for Vaud), compared with just over 5.5 billion for Zurich. Zurich, however, has a larger population (1.6 million) than the two Lake Geneva cantons combined (1.4 million).
If we translate these tax revenues into francs per capita, we discover that a resident of Geneva brought in 8441 francs, a resident of Vaud 3566 francs, a resident of Zurich 3436 francs and a resident of Bern 1584 francs. This ranking does not betray an exceptional year; it remains the same when we take the average values over the last four years: 6613 francs for a citizen of Geneva, 3529 francs for a citizen of Vaud, 3310 francs for a citizen of Zurich and 1575 francs for a citizen of Bern.”
I’m so sick of Romandie being treated as a cash cow without getting much in return, I’m starting to wonder if we would be better off outside of CH
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