Coming into force on Sunday, the new CFF timetable can now be experienced by commuters. This change, the biggest made since the early 2000s, aimed to better serve the French-speaking part of the country. But what do the main stakeholders think? Satisfaction, small hiccups or bigger problems, our readers gave us their impressions on D+3.
Stéphane, for example, found to his cost that this new grid had not yet been fully integrated by CFF staff. Tuesday, around 9 p.m., his train which linked Yverdon (VD) to Lausanne did not make the new stop at Renens (VD). “He braked suddenly towards the station, then left, as if the driver had forgotten to stop,” confides the Vaudois. An intuition confirmed by the CFF: “Indeed, a driver forgot the stop at Renens”. However, this is the only problem of this kind that the company has experienced since the introduction of its new schedule.
Despite this hiccup, Stéphane said he was generally satisfied with the new grid. Asked on Instagram, several readers shared this good first impression. “From Bussigny to Geneva, it’s great!”, said one internet user. Several others welcomed denser schedules on their daily commute.
But not everyone shared this observation. A majority of the responses received decry the same problem: connection times, and therefore travel times, are longer. Barbara, for example, is “terribly angry.” For this resident of St-Prex (VD) who works in Geneva, each journey took around 20 minutes, due to a long wait at Morges (VD) station. In the same vein, “Blick” revealed, Wednesday, that the Essert-Pittet (VD) – Ependes (VD) connection which previously lasted three minutes is no longer possible in less than three-quarters of an hour. And many other extensions of travel times, certainly less extreme, have been reported to us by our readers.
“Adjustments” to come
Contacted by us, the CFF confirmed that they were aware of the changes in habits that this new timetable was causing among customers, “very often in a positive way, but sometimes also in a negative way”. As a result, the railway company has established an observation phase, which will last until mid-January at the earliest. The findings made should subsequently allow “adjustments to be made, particularly in terms of train occupancy”. The CFF nevertheless warns: “The room for maneuver remains extremely limited”.
