Yes, that works great in dense cities that can justify running a train every 5 minutes. What sets Switzerland apart is that it can offer reliable, punctual service to tiny mountain villages that may only have a couple of trains a day, but those trains are carefully scheduled so that you can get there from Zurich or wherever with an absolute minimum of waiting around for your connections or fretting if you'll make it. (In the unlikely event that your train is a few minutes late, they will hold the connection.)
> Yes, that works great in dense cities that can justify running a train every 5 minutes.
Indeed, here in Singapore during peak hours the trains come even more often. And that's not counting all the trains in a station, just the ones from one metro line that come and go on one platform in one direction.
Every once in a while, they are upgrading the signalling systems, so that they can squeeze even more trains in.
Something which I only realised by watching a London Underground driver who was vlogging for a while (before he was asked to stop) is that, yes, the frequency of the trains is the main metric for customers.
However, once things go off schedule it can have pretty acute consequences for drivers and operational staff. The timetables are built around having drivers at specific places at specific times who will have required breaks at certain times and a maximum allowable working time. The rolling stock itself needs to be where it's needed as well, it's easy for it to get bunched up behind a track circuit failure etc.
In Berlin, in a large part of the city, the trains come every 4-5 minutes. You rarely need to check a timetable (and when you do, you'd rather check the app, which knows where the trains actually are, not just where they should be). You just show up at the station and wait for the next train.
Truly a wonderful revelation I had to stop reading the time table and see that it says every 15 minutes or so a bus will come during the times I'd expect it to, worst case 45, etc.
Yes, that works great in dense cities that can justify running a train every 5 minutes. What sets Switzerland apart is that it can offer reliable, punctual service to tiny mountain villages that may only have a couple of trains a day, but those trains are carefully scheduled so that you can get there from Zurich or wherever with an absolute minimum of waiting around for your connections or fretting if you'll make it. (In the unlikely event that your train is a few minutes late, they will hold the connection.)
> Yes, that works great in dense cities that can justify running a train every 5 minutes.
Indeed, here in Singapore during peak hours the trains come even more often. And that's not counting all the trains in a station, just the ones from one metro line that come and go on one platform in one direction.
Every once in a while, they are upgrading the signalling systems, so that they can squeeze even more trains in.
Something which I only realised by watching a London Underground driver who was vlogging for a while (before he was asked to stop) is that, yes, the frequency of the trains is the main metric for customers.
However, once things go off schedule it can have pretty acute consequences for drivers and operational staff. The timetables are built around having drivers at specific places at specific times who will have required breaks at certain times and a maximum allowable working time. The rolling stock itself needs to be where it's needed as well, it's easy for it to get bunched up behind a track circuit failure etc.
If trains are frequent enough, passengers do ignore schedules and just turn up. This is common on metro/subway/underground services.
In Berlin, in a large part of the city, the trains come every 4-5 minutes. You rarely need to check a timetable (and when you do, you'd rather check the app, which knows where the trains actually are, not just where they should be). You just show up at the station and wait for the next train.
Truly a wonderful revelation I had to stop reading the time table and see that it says every 15 minutes or so a bus will come during the times I'd expect it to, worst case 45, etc.