The director of the Switzerland rail real estate told me they went around the world studying existing systems and copied the Japanese way of building stations.

The director of the Switzerland rail real estate told me they went around the world studying existing systems and copied the Japanese way of building stations. The government owned the stations and leased retail spaces out to businesses in a repeatable templated way. Their goal was for users to never have to leave the station on their way to and from work. So they standardized metro/train stations to have a grocery store, dry cleaning, etc. This was highly profitable and successful. A lot of rail systems focus on the costs but don’t think about how to design it so that humans want to use rail.