61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

The interests of the railway companies
The task of the railway companies was to operate the Swiss rail network at a
technical and commercial level, and to ensure both internal and transit traffic.
Thus, not only the rails themselves, but also staff, electricity, rolling stock and
locomotives were made available for transit use, since the Italian locomotives
used a different electrical system and the German access lines had not yet been
electrified. The majority of orders went to the SBB, operator of the Gotthard line,
with a smaller proportion going to the Lötschberg-Simplon line, which was run
by the private competitor company BLS, albeit subsidised by the canton of Bern.
Both companies had gone through hard times in the crisis of the 1930s, and had
accumulated deficits which had to be covered by the state. There was a general
decline in the use of transport capacity, and a corresponding increase in competition
from the non-Swiss Alpine crossings (Mont-Cenis in France; the Brenner
and Tarvisio route in Austria). The war brought about major changes: there was
a sharp reversal in the previous decline in passenger traffic. Whereas the SBB had
carried only 166 million passengers in 1938, the figure rose to 279 million by
1944. In the same period, the volume of goods rose from 20.85 million to 33.47
million tons. Starting 1939, company accounts were back in the black. Transit
played its part in these pleasing results and, although its contribution was not
large, it was also not to be ignored. Before the war, transit accounted for 6%; in
1940 it rose to 13.5%, and in 1941 it peaked at 16%; the figure for 1942 was
15%, with 10% in 1943 and just 7.5% in 1944. The fact that profits remained
contained is explained by the commitment to the principle of preferential rates
set out in the Gotthard Agreement of 1907. These averaged only about half of
domestic rates and were, in turn, kept stable by the government up until 1944
in order to combat inflation.
Throughout the war, the two railway companies, within their limited
autonomy, pursued a decidedly aggressive profit policy based on the concept of
international competitiveness. For one thing, the Swiss railway companies
(despite state guarantees) worked as profit-oriented businesses and for that
reason alone had an interest in providing services to the Axis powers. Secondly,
the mere fact that these were companies (and this was even more clearly seen
with the power stations) with all their operating costs and investments to be
written off, meant that there was a certain pressure to exploit their full capacity
for economic reasons. The aim, which had the agreement of the fundamentally
anti-fascist railway workers’ union, was to ship the greatest possible transit
volumes on technically and commercially favourable terms on Switzerland’s
own lines, and to ensure a strong market position for the future. After the
turning point of the war in 1943, the companies became aware that «policy»
decisions were now inevitable. Added to this was the fact that their customers
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