SBB cuts more Deutsche Bahn services over excessive delays
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From April 29, various German long-distance train services to Switzerland will only go as far as Basel, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) has confirmed. Continual and excessive delays at Deutsche Bahn mean more travellers will have to change trains if they want to travel deeper into the alpine nation.
SBB restricts more Deutsche Bahn services
In a statement, SBB confirmed that more rail routes between Germany and Switzerland will be cut short, due to what the company described as “major delays” to services. The measures began on April 29, 2025 and are expected to continue until further notice.
In future, the EuroCity (EC) 7 service from Hamburg to Interlaken Ost via Bremen, Dortmund, Cologne, Koblenz, Freiburg, Olten, and Bern will only run to Basel. This measure will also apply to the EC 9 from Dortmund to Zurich.
SBB advises travellers on the route to alight in Basel and take regular Swiss public transport services to their destinations. More SBB trains will be run on the Swiss section of the EC 7 and EC 9 routes to compensate for the reduced service.
However, it’s important to note that EC 7 and 9 services heading in the opposite direction, from Switzerland to Germany, will run as normal as they are operated by SBB.
Frequent DB delays are a headache for the Swiss railways
The new measure comes as Deutsche Bahn continues to grapple with poor punctuality - a factor blamed on a lack of investment in maintaining the German rail network. While SBB achieved record punctuality rates in 2024, just 62,5 percent of DB trains arrived on time last year. The company also admitted in August 2024 that it had lost control of its timetables.
Deutsche Bahn’s lack of punctuality has proven to be a headache for SBB, who fear that allowing delayed German trains to run beyond border regions would lead to knock-on disruption to Swiss services. Therefore, in late 2022, SBB decided that three trains heading from Hamburg to Chur would only run as far as Basel SBB, to prevent the often-delayed trains from disrupting the network.
In July 2024, SBB upped the ante, announcing that any Deutsche Bahn train which arrives in Switzerland between 10 and 15 minutes late will be cancelled after it reaches Basel. At the time, they argued that in 90 percent of occasions, passengers on these trains would be able to find a suitable Swiss service that would run on time.