The Swiss Federal Council has granted the infrastructure concession required for the construction and operation of the new M3 metro line in Lausanne, a project that will expand the city’s public transportation network and meet the continuous growth in passenger numbers.

The new line will connect Lausanne Central Station to the Blécherette neighborhood, helping to improve mobility in the northwestern part of the city, where urban development is booming.

The m3 line will run entirely underground and will be fully automated. With a length of 3.5 km, it will serve 6 stations between the central station and Blécherette. The project is part of the Lausanne–Morges Agglomeration Program (PALM), through which the Canton of Vaud is developing the main urban public transit corridors to support population growth and rising demand for mobility.

The new line is not an isolated project but part of a comprehensive program to modernize public transportation in Lausanne. In parallel with the construction of the m3 line, authorities are also modernizing the existing m2 line, which opened in 2008 and has already far exceeded its design capacity. While it was originally designed to handle 25 million passengers annually, by 2024 it had carried over 36 million passengers. To eliminate existing bottlenecks, a second tunnel will be built between Lausanne Station and Flon, and the M2 line’s automation system will be replaced with a state-of-the-art one, which will allow for increased train frequency and transport capacity.

The new M3 line will have the stations Lausanne-Gare, Chauderon, Beaulieu, Casernes, Plaines-du-Loup, and Blécherette, and will also serve the new eco-friendly Plaines-du-Loup neighborhood—where approximately 8,000 homes and 3,000 jobs are planned—as well as the Tuilière Stadium and the area’s sports complexes. The Chauderon station will become a major intermodal hub, with connections to the Lausanne–Échallens–Bercher (LEB) railway, the future tram line, and the high-capacity bus network.

With the simultaneous operation of lines m2 and m3, transport capacity between the central station and the city center will increase significantly. Line m2 will continue to serve the route through Flon, while line m3 will take over passenger flows through Chauderon, contributing to a more efficient distribution of passengers and reducing congestion on the current network.

The federal government is contributing CHF 144 million (EUR 156.5 million) to the project through the Urban Transport Program, while the remainder of the investment, estimated at approximately CHF 1.3 billion (EUR 1.41 billion), will be borne primarily by the Canton of Vaud.