Today's Railways June 2004 -

12 Dec. 2004 will see major changes to the Swiss timetable as part of the continuing implementation of the "Bahn 2000" regular interval timetable.

A preview is available at -

www.Fahrplanentwurf.ch

Apparently, this year is to see 90% of times changed and train kms. increased by 14%.

The major change is the opening of the new Mattstten-Rothrist line with 200 km/h running, many journey time reductions and many services boosted to hourly or half hourly frequencies.

Bern - Zurich times will be cut from 69 to 58 minutes and Geneve -Luzern from 3 hr 29 to 2 hr 55.

Services to go to half-hour frequency include -

Geneve-Lausanne (non-stop)
Geneve-Bern
Bern-Zurich (non-stop)
Bern-Thun-Spiez
Zurich-Biel/Bienne
Bern-Basel
Bern-Olten
Chiasso/Locarno-Bellinzona
Zurich-Weinfelden-Frauenfeld

In addition, a number of additional areas will have new tariff zones, with a single ticket valid on all modes.

I already, some times ago, did mark in my calendar, to buy a lot of (serial) tickets (like 6 for 5 Zurich-Interlaken, 6 for 5 one-day passes in second and first class, one-dayclass chages from 2nd to 1sr class, etc. etc) on december-11 2004 (a day before the upcoming price increase).

These tickets are valid 3 years.