The Swiss Confederation intends to invest over a billion Swiss francs to develop and upgrade the Lausanne-Renens railway junction. The aim is to improve existing infrastructure to be able to transport more passengers on longer 400m trains with double-deck coaches.

Work on this junction will accommodate the growing demand on west Switzerland’s network and is scheduled to start in December 2015 for a period of around 10 years.

The work requires careful planning, particularly with regard to train timetabling. It involves reconciling the various work constraints (safety, budget, delays) with continued railway operations whilst ensuring a balance among passenger, regional, national, international and freight traffic. To this end, a working group comprising SBB, the Federal Office of Transport (FOT) and the cantons of Geneva and Vaud was established in October 2011 to assess the impact of the work.

The assessment shows that current railway services can be maintained during the 10-year project, albeit with a few adjustments. Journey times and some connections will need to be changed, in particular between Lausanne and Geneva and between Basel and the Lake Geneva Region. The ICN service between Basel-Bienne-Lausanne is expected to take an extra 30 minutes.

(Source: SBB)