Zurich Trains

Zürich Hauptbahnhof, opened in 1847, stands at the centre of one of Europe's most integrated rail networks. Switzerland's busiest station handles over 400,000 passengers daily, connecting regional S-Bahn services, long-distance SBB trains, and the suburban SZU lines beneath a single iron-and-glass hall.

The S-Bahn network that radiates outward from Zürich HB launched in 1990, making it among the earliest fully integrated regional rail systems on the continent. Lines like the S16, running from Zürich Flughafen south through the city to Herrliberg-Feldmeilen, stitch together the airport, the central station, and lakeside communities in a single timed circuit. The airport station itself sits on an underground SBB concourse, giving Zürich Flughafen a direct rail connection that bypasses the city centre for travellers continuing deeper into Switzerland or beyond.

At street level, VBZ trams have run along corridors such as Seefeldstrasse since the nineteenth century, and at Zürich HB the transition between tram, S-Bahn, long-distance rail, and bicycle is managed in the space of a few hundred metres — including one of the city's large covered bike parks beside the main platforms.

This instalment in the ongoing Trains series focuses on Zürich's network at a moment of ordinary operation, sitting within a longer arc of documentation that follows rail systems across countries and contexts. Where other instalments examine infrastructure under stress or in transition, Zürich here reads as a system working as designed — dense, punctual, and layered.