Railway stations in Ticino: decorum and safety (cross-border guide)

Context

In brief

• Parliamentary question submitted to the Council of State
• Topic: decorum, cleanliness, and safety of railway stations
• Involved hubs: main, regional, and secondary stations
• Coordinated monitoring and SBB plan requested

Key facts

• Author: Daniele Piccaluga
• Political group: Lega dei Ticinesi
• Cited cases: Bellinzona and Mendrisio
• Involved entities: SBB, Canton, Municipalities, Police

Railway stations in Ticino represent much more than just a transit place for the thousands of commuters who use the connections every day to travel across the region. For tourists and visitors, they constitute the first direct contact with the cities and the canton, effectively acting as a true calling card. For this very reason, it is essential that railway stations—considering both the main hubs located in urban centers and the regional and secondary ones scattered across various areas—manage to guarantee adequate and constant standards of order, cleanliness, decorum, and safety. This is the extreme summary of the official parliamentary question submitted by Daniele Piccaluga, member and coordinator of the Lega dei Ticinesi, to the attention of the Ticino Council of State.

…

Operational details

The Swiss Federal Railways themselves, as recalled in the text of the parliamentary question submitted by the representative of the Lega dei Ticinesi, clearly state within their own regulations the primary objective of ensuring stations that are always safe, fully functional, and clean for users. The company's provisions already include precise rules aimed at countering nuisance behavior, acts of vandalism, the uncontrolled dumping of waste, and any other form of degradation that could compromise the usability of collective spaces. The intent of the parliamentary act is certainly not to criminalize certain categories of people, but rather to reaffirm a fundamental and straightforward principle: public spaces intended for collective transport must be able to be used peacefully by all citizens and constantly maintained in decent conditions.

Over recent years, public institutions at various levels have exerted considerable financial and organizational efforts. The Canton, the Confederation, the Municipalities, and transport companies have invested substantial financial resources with the stated objective of enhancing and making regional and national public transport collectively more attractive. In this scenario, it would be profoundly contradictory to decide to increase the frequencies of connections, implement new runs, and proceed with the modernization of material infrastructures without paying the same attention and care to the quality, cleanliness, and security of the physical spaces through which users daily access the mobility network.

…

Key points

Starting from these premises and detailed considerations, the parliamentary question submits a series of specific questions to the Ticino Government to clarify the true extent of the phenomenon. First, it asks whether the Council of State currently possesses a comprehensive and updated assessment of the situation regarding decorum, cleanliness, and security of all Ticino railway stations, including secondary and peripheral locations. It also inquires what official reports regarding security issues, acts of vandalism, damage, or marked degradation have been received over the last three years by the Cantonal Police or other competent services of the cantonal administration.

A further central aspect concerns the existence or absence of structured and coordinated monitoring among the various institutional and operational actors—namely the Canton, Municipalities, SBB, TILO, Transport Police, and the various cantonal and municipal police forces—aimed at promptly identifying the stations or time slots presenting the greatest critical issues. It is then asked whether the Government currently considers the standards of cleanliness, routine and extraordinary maintenance, night lighting, and surveillance of Ticino stations satisfactory, with a particular emphasis on regional and secondary stations. Finally, clarifications are requested on the procedures by which situations of degradation found by local authorities are reported to SBB and what the average technical intervention times are.

…