Switzerland – Public transport to be smoke-free. From 11 December 2005.

Engelberg, Switzerland.

“The decision was taken to do away with smoking compartments on all CFF-SBB-FFS trains! As of 11 December 2005 smoking will no longer be allowed… even if many of the old smoking compartments still have ashtrays. It will be some six months before the final ashtray has been removed.”

At last! This is a decision I was waiting for a while!!

Switzerland owns one of the most modern, useful, precise railway network. But all their trains have entire smoking wagons, or all the wagons are cut into two parts, smoking and non smoking!

This is really ridiculous… and obsolete!

Here is an example. I was in Engelberg on April 27, 2005. I took the Zentralbahnen train to Luzern. The train was composed of 3 wagons: 2 non smoking wagons and one smoking wagon. The train was really crowded! None exactly, the 2 non smoking wagons were crowded and noisy… the smoking wagon was… empty!

I don’t like crowd! I don’t like smoke either! So I decided to climb up in the smoking wagon because it was empty… I thought it was a chance for me…! Not a chance at all! The smoking wagon was full of a horrible smoke stench!!! Impossible to stay in the wagon like that…

Here is one of the non smoking wagons…

Here is the empty smoking wagon…!