Evidence of meeting #13 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was transit.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
I do not understand. I'm sorry. Just say it again.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
There are unions. Are the public transit workers—the drivers, the maintenance crew—members of unions?
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
We have members of unions, but it's very different. It really depends on the region you are in. For example, in the Catholic regions, workers are not very well organized, not like they are in other regions. It really depends on the company you are with and the region you are in. In general, we can say that Swiss workers are not very well organized compared with those in other countries such as France or Italy, for example, if you are comparing European countries.
Nevertheless, we have regular discussions with the trade unions. We discuss fringe benefits and how wages are developing. The trade unions are important partners, even though not many workers are organized into unions.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Do you know the percentage of workers who are organized as part of unions?
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
No, I can't tell you a percentage. It differs from enterprise to enterprise.
November 21st, 2011 / 4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
You explained the process by which your public transit system is funded and administered, and I have to confess that I found it to be extremely complex. Do you find that the degree of layering and the mixed labyrinth of responsibilities leads to management problems, difficulty in executing projects, and so on?
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
Well, this construction has been historically built, and I think that until now this construction has worked surprisingly well. As I already mentioned, we have the challenge that federally there are different roles, and this is one of our main challenges. It is very important to have good coordination. For example, we need the coordination of our Mr. Price, who of course wants people buying tickets not to have to pay that much, and on the other side, of the owner, who would like to have some revenue. They have different interests, and this is one of our main challenges. I think until now it has worked extremely well, but we have grown up with it, so we're used to it.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Director Bütler. I appreciate your coming in front of the committee today.
I have a couple of questions, because I'm not as familiar with Switzerland as I'd like to be and you have brought up a number of different topics that are of particular interest.
First of all, what is the population of Switzerland?
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
We have about seven million people.
Conservative
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Approximately how many people use your system on any given day? Let's say on a typical Monday, do you know how many people utilize your services?
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
I can't tell you this number, but what I can tell you is that the Swiss population on average makes about 3,000 kilometres a year of trips--this is also if you have little babies with you. This is quite a lot, I guess; it's the second-highest number after Japan.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Okay. I appreciate hearing that.
In your presentation, you talked about some of the challenges you are facing--
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
I'm sorry. I could give you two other numbers that might be important.
We have here in Switzerland two very special ticketing features. We have a half-price ticket. This means that you buy this half-price ticket, which only costs you about 120 euros a year, and then for the whole year pay just half the price on tickets. About 2.5 million people in Switzerland have this half-price ticket.
We have another very important ticket, which is what we call l'abonnement général. It is a general ticket. You can get this for a very suitable price. We have about 500,000 people using l'abonnement général.
You can use it for free for the whole year on every train, on every tram, on every bus, and on every ship. If you divide the price that you have to pay over 365 days, second-class travel costs about 10 euros a day while first-class costs about 12 euros a day, which is a very good price. Maybe these two numbers will help you.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Now, switching gears, in your presentation you said that, moving forward, one of the challenges facing your system is having liberalization and regulatory reform. Usually, liberalization means to do away with burdensome regulations, and regulatory reform typically refers to making them. To me, it almost sounds as if it's the same thing. Can you enlighten me a little on that?
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
I can give you an example.
We have the tracks.
For example, within the European Union, we have liberalization of the tracks, which means that not only can Swiss enterprises travel on the Swiss tracks but also others can, such as French or Italian enterprises, for example. We're going into liberalization.
We say, okay, this is no problem for us, but then the regulations begin, because all the trains have to have the same standards. They must to have the same standards of security and the same systems, such as ECTS, which is an automatic security system for train drivers. We're having more liberalization, but at the same time, we're getting more and more regulations. Sometimes this is difficult, especially for us, because the European Union--and therefore also our office--is trying to make the regulations the same.
It makes a difference in regard to whether you have a big railway company that is going through all of Switzerland or a rather small railway company that is transporting people up in the mountains. We're trying to work together with our Federal Office of Transport so that they're not just taking the European Union regulations and putting them onto Switzerland. We would like to have a differentiation.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Thank you very much for that.
I'm sure that I only have about a minute left. Does the federal government in Switzerland contribute towards the operating costs of your public transit system?
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
No, they do not contribute to operating costs. They contribute only to infrastructure costs.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Okay.
Thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate your answering all of our questions.
Deputy Director, Union des transports publics de Suisse
Thank you very much.
