Private railway (Switzerland)
In Switzerland, private railways are those railway companies that are organized under private law , i.e. usually as stock corporations under the Code of Obligations .
However, the majority of shares are rarely privately owned. This only applies to major tourist routes such as Matterhorn Gotthard Verkehrs AG or Jungfraubahn Holding. The Matterhorn Gotthard infrastructure , the BLS Netz AG and the TPF operations infrastructure (INFRA TPF) AG are majority owned by the federal government; in most other private railways, the cantons have the majority of shares, for example the canton of Graubünden with the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) or the canton of Bern with the BLS . Since January 1, 1999, SBB has also been organized as a stock corporation, albeit as a stock corporation under special law, and in many respects on an equal footing with private railways.
The classic private railways belong to the licensed transport companies (KTU), whereby it is actually not the company that is licensed, but a specific service (passenger transport license) or a specific infrastructure (infrastructure license).
However, those railway undertakings (EVU) that handle goods traffic on the Swiss (and European) rail network with a network access permit can also be designated as private railways .