Switzerland’s national railway operator has stopped two connections from Germany at the border, accusing Deutsche Bahn delays of negatively affecting its own timetables.
As of Tuesday, April 29th, two Deutsche Bahn (DB) routes that had previously terminated further inside Switzerland are now set to end near the German-Swiss border.
DB’s EuroCity (EC) 7 service from Hamburg to Interlaken Ost, and the EC 9 service from Dortmund to Zurich, will now terminate in the city of Basel.
The decision was made by Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) to mitigate the impact of chronically late-running DB trains on the Swiss network. In comparison with ultra-punctual Swiss trains, the German operator had been regularly undermining the German reputation for efficiency.
SBB said it will run its own additional trains on the Swiss sections of the affected routes in order to minimise the inconvenience for passengers, who will now have to change at Basel before continuing their journeys.
Trains returning to Germany from Switzerland on these routes will continue to run as usual.
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A sustainable solution to an unsustainable problem
Swiss Railways operates a policy of terminating trains that arrive in Basel more than 20 minutes behind schedule, and the number of trains affected has risen rapidly in recent years as a direct result of DB.
According to information provided by the Federal Ministry of Transport (at the request of Green Party MP Matthias Gastel), 11 percent of journeys on the Munich-Zurich route were terminated during the first quarter of 2024 (compared to 2.1 percent in 2023).
Some of these delays were caused by storms and accidents, but the report revealed that 75 percent were due to infrastructure problems.
In comments reported in Der Spiegel, Head of SBB Vincent Ducrot identified the root cause of these problems as an overly complex corporate structure, a lack of digitisation, and a chronic lack of investment.
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In 2024, approximately 64 percent of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance passenger trains reached their destination on time. In Switzerland, the equivalent figure was 93.2 percent, up from 92.5 percent the previous year.
The decision to terminate both the EC7 and EC9 services in Basel is fixed until the SBB’s next timetable review, scheduled for mid-December 2025.
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