The railway is considered an environmentally friendly means of transport for both local and long-distance travel. Nevertheless, the railway must not rest on its laurels but must constantly strive for optimization and improvement in order to continue to justify its good reputation as a sustainable mode of transport. At the same time, the railway must be fit for the future and, above all, offer significantly greater capacities in passenger transport in order to actually achieve the planned goals of modal shift. An important and often completely underestimated factor influencing the efficiency of railways, capacity and energy consumption is the layout of vehicles. There is great potential for optimization in both local and long-distance transport that can contribute to an overall increase in the efficiency of railways. In both local and long-distance transport, vehicle design has a significant influence on passenger changeover time. A shorter dwell time at the station means that, with an unchanged timetable, the speed on the line can be reduced while maintaining punctuality. With appropriately designed vehicles that contribute significantly to a reduction in travel time, a saving of up to 20% in traction energy can be achieved on the line. Particularly on heavily used commuter routes with frequent train arrivals and departures, the dwell time has a significant influence on the possible headway time. If, for example, dwell times are 20 seconds longer than necessary, the headway time must also be increased by 20 seconds. For timetables on commuter routes, where the headway time is sometimes 2.5 minutes, this means an increase of about 15% or, conversely, a corresponding reduction in line capacity. The design of local transport vehicles also influences capacity in another area. Unsuitable design can create areas in the vehicles where passengers are less likely to want to spend time. This results in an uneven distribution of passengers in the train and, despite a theoretically sufficient number of seats available, passengers have to be left behind on the platform, which also reduces capacity. In addition, the platform infrastructure also contributes significantly to the distribution of passengers along a train, which further reduces capacity due to differences in utilization. Commuters, in particular, know exactly which door on the train is best for them to have the shortest route to the exit at the destination station. On lines where passengers always board and alight at the same place, this means that the doors near to these are much more frequently used. In addition to the uneven utilization and thus reduced capacity on the train, this in turn increases the passenger changeover time and thus the dwell time, which leads to the above-mentioned problems. In long-distance transport or in local transport trains that travel to airports, for example, luggage is an additional burden. In most vehicles, luggage racks are seriously undersized, in the wrong place or do not meet passengers' needs or expectations. In many trains, this means that up to 20% of seats cannot be used because they are blocked by luggage, which in turn reduces capacity. At the same time, unsuitable luggage racks also significantly increase the time needed to board and disembark. Furthermore, the acceleration capability of the vehicles and the vehicle concepts generally play an important role in the topic of energy consumption. Railcar trains with Jakobs bogies or single wheels have a significantly lower weight per passenger than trains with bogies and locomotive traction. Since the mass is linearly included in the energy consideration, the train concept thus has a noticeable influence on the energy requirement. Vehicles with a high acceleration capacity, for example, have the advantage of reaching the desired maximum speed faster and thus, if the journey is on time, can travel at a lower speed and thus with reduced energy consumption. These are all examples of how well-designed vehicles can not only save a lot of energy and increase capacity, but also improve customer satisfaction and operations by increasing punctuality. The above findings are the result of more than 20 years of research at the Vienna University of Technology, during which more than 50,000 passengers were interviewed, more than 400,000 passengers were observed and more than 20,000 passengers were recorded directly during the passenger changeover by means of video analysis to evaluate passenger behavior and passenger preferences. The presentation focuses on how vehicles should be designed to maximize efficiency while also being customer-friendly. The topic of platforms is also discussed in more detail.