Blissful Swiss Trams.
The platonic idea tramway(s).
Cities Skylines is not a game I’ve ever really loved, but when you look at the dense tram networks weaving around hilly cities so often shown in footage meant to show the game off, there is only one city that comes to mind for me that resembles this sort of glorious intersection of street railways and interesting topography — Zurich.
Zurich’s trams are so great that sometimes when I’m sad about transit, I’ll just go there on Google Maps, fly around and look at their trams, running through dense historic quarters, through at-grade spaghetti junctions, and winding up the hillsides that surround the city.
I mention it a few times here, but a city like Toronto has so so much to learn from a city like Zurich and its trams. Virtually every single issue with Toronto’s network has a better solution in Zurich, something to aspire to, and something that makes public transport better.
These trams, like basically all Swiss trams, are good transit. This is not the Toronto streetcar network, but the platonic ideal of public transport: Efficient, attractive, integrated, modern, and expansive. The trams are also really fast, and watching videos of them — like this one from Aviationvlad — it almost looks as if the video is sped up.
If I ran the TTC, or had any real say on how things worked in Toronto — or most cities with trams, I’d be moving towards a network that looks more like Zurich in every conceivable way.
There are some essential elements to Zurich’s trams which are worth highlighting — and some of these are common to the other major Swiss tram systems — the trams are meter gauge, and particularly nice. But, what’s interesting is that the actual tram networks in the major Swiss cities are quite different in topology. Look here at Bern, Geneva, Basel, and then Zurich.
Bern’s network is highly concentrated around a central trunk with minimal branching.
Geneva’s network consists of a number of strong interlinked corridors, almost like a metro system.
Basel is honestly like a mix of all the others and has that very special feature of being tri-national. It’s not uncommon to hear about transit systems struggling to travel between states or provinces, much less entire countries.
But this post is very much about Zurich, in some ways I’d say it’s like one of my old “explainer” videos, but compressed a bit, and in text form.
Zurich’s tram network, which is represented on the above map by the non-light blue lines numbered at-or-below 20, has its core in a loop of tracks that run between Zurich Hbf, Central, Bellevue, and Paradeplatz, which are all in the city centre on the west and east side of the river Limmat. There are other important corridors running away from this “box” to the southwest — lines 5, 7, 13, and 17, northwest along the Limmat with the 4, 13, and 17. Central and Bellevue on the east side of the Limmat are connected by two routes — lines 2 and 4, and each of these major hubs is the confluence of a variety of routes from the northeast, east, and southeast.
The network is perhaps unusually radial overall for a tram system of its size — related to this being the main form of urban transit in Zurich, since there is famously not a U-Bahn or subway system, and the connectivity between routes is limited outside of the city centre, with only route 8 in the west and routes 7, 9, and 12 in the north really being quite connective.
As you might expect then, there are a number of orbital bus routes, such as the 32, 33, and 72. These routes are all actually trolleybuses, which include operations with some wonderful and gigantic bi-articulated trolleybuses — that is, a bus with two bends.
World: A Challenger to the Tram Arrives.
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I guess then since I’m mentioning the trolleybuses — which run on the same power supply as the trams, it’s worth also mentioning the actual tram vehicles, which are naturally excellent. Like other well-managed tram fleets (looking at you. Toronto) there are numerous series of vehicles from different decades all in concurrent operation (despite Zurich only having a small number more trams than Toronto), with the oldest vehicles now being replaced by the Flexity units at the top of this post being from the 1970s (notably a little older than Toronto’s former oldest trams and still operating in revenue service). And when I say these trams are nice, I mean it: the seats in the latest Flexities are a beautiful wood finish, and there are lovely digital displays providing detailed information.
It’s also worth mentioning that like so many legacy tram networks — Amsterdam, Toronto, Berlin — the Zurich tram network features trams with a single cab, and doors on only one side (with an exception I will get to later). However, it also features longer trams at greater than 40 metres in length (as Toronto was just getting 30-metre trams, other cities were going longer still), despite the fact that Zurich’s trams are some of the narrower ones out there, no doubt connected to their narrow gauge and the tight streets of this mountain metropolis.
Now, despite the fact that Zurich is solidly in the German-speaking world, the tram network really is just a tram network, not a tunnel-laden Stadtbahn. There is — to be clear — one major tunnel on the system with several stops northeast of the city centre. This tunnel was originally created for use by the never-built Zurich U-Bahn (part of which is also used by the S-4 and S-10 suburban train lines), which has to be one of the only cases where a not completed line saw so much construction completed before being cancelled, and so much use going forward.
Much like other railways in Zurich and Switzerland writ-large, the Zurich trams are winding and steep, no doubt helped by their narrow gauge.
They also operate across a wide range of right-of-way types — from in pedestrian streets in the city centre, to mixed-traffic, dedicated lanes, private reservations (including with green track), tunnels, and in a few cases even in a railway-like environment with crossing gates.
Many of these right-of-way typologies — such as those with private reservations with long inter-stop distances — are particularly likely to be found on what are sometimes called Stadtbahn’s or light railways — the Glattalbahn and Limmattalbahn.
These are new, more modern suburban tram routes, but routes that see Zurich’s urban transit through-operate on them. The Glattalbahn heads north of the city including to the Zurich airport — providing a key local air-rail link corresponding with SBB’s national air-rail link passing through the airport. One tram stop near the airport connected to the SBB corridor that just misses the facility is even an elevated structure that looks like something you might see in North America.
By comparison, the Limmattalbahn heads west of the city along its namesake river.
Finally, there is the S-18, which is a true tram train. This service runs to communities southwest of the city and features railway-style alignments as well as crossing gates. Trains on the S-18 can be over 70 metres long, so they really are not traditional trams, despite running over the Zurich tram network to connect to the centre. Even more interesting to me is that they run express, skipping stops within the city. These trains also feature bidrectional cabs and doors on both sides, so while they turn around with a loop in the city, they can use island platforms and crossovers in the countryside.
The networks stops are generally quite nice with large visible signs indicating service. There are also rather intricate confluence stops at several points (such as Paradeplatz mentioned earlier) where there are numerous platforms and even large canopy structures, sometimes incorporating businesses. When I tell people that major tram stops should not just be a pole with some numbers, these are what come to mind.
Now, while not all stops have level boarding, like so many things in the Swiss transport system, they don’t wait to solve everything before making individual things better. Toronto doesn’t take accessibility and level boarding seriously on its trams, and it seems like it never will unless it can find a universal solution. Zurich is happy to have some stops with level boarding, even if not every stop has it.
Broadly speaking, why exactly is it that the Swiss can have such nice trams? Well, they clearly care a lot. They are willing to go to much greater lengths to plan and prevent closures than some places. When doing new overhead over a major junction, I heard about them building the new overhead above the old overhead and then swapping them in a single night. Toronto would say “impossible” and probably close the junction for months. Service is operated thoughtfully, trams run to schedule, and every little detail is executed fairly thoughtfully. The Swiss are just meeting their reputation for comprehensive and extreme confidence.
I do to be fair also think that the typical urban form of Swiss cities helps. They are rarely very high density, and where there is substantial density, it’s a small cluster, not an anglo world CBD. This all lends itself to trams. The city’s “core” tends to be less concentrated than it would otherwise be, and cities sprawl into surrounding towns and villages.
Of course, these are the same factors at play with Swiss trains. They benefit from the polycentrism of the country and its regions, as well as extremely competent operations and infrastructure development. It’s amazing what’s possible when you want to make things work.
In Switzerland labor is expensive, and capital is cheap. Which is why we tend to go for solutions that are more capital and less labor intensive. Trams are an example.
In Bern there is a new tram line being built. It is going to replace a bus line that runs 2 minute headway during rush hour with a tram service that will run on a 6 minute headway. Requires investment, but in the end you move the same amount of people with less drivers.
Hell yeah, transit explained on substack!! I actually planned most of my recent holiday trip around Europe around places and transit lines I found through RMTransit's transit explained episodes, and Zurich was one of the stops because of S10! Delightful (pricey) ride up the mountain on single-track followed by a snowy hike alongside the tracks for most of the way up to the "Top of Zurich", so thanks for that Reece!
Also rode the trolleybuses (big up 33) a lot, unfortunately didn't get around to the S18 but I saw on the other track zooming past while I was riding a tram haha