Rail traffic SBB will run almost 1000 more extra trains this year than in 2024
Around 1600 extra SBB trains will run in 2025, twice as many as in an average event year. Major events are becoming more frequent. The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Basel from May 13 to 17 is the first of these.
10.04.2025, 11:47
SDA
SBB will be running 115 extra trains around the ESC in Basel, announced Florian Kurt, Head of Event Traffic, at a media conference on Thursday. Visitors will be able to travel in comfort from Basel St. Jakob to Basel SBB and then travel home on additional connections. For example to Zurich, Bern or Lausanne with a connection to Geneva.
It is not clear how many of the 250,000 visitors will use the train. SBB is basing its offer on estimates. Thanks to data from the Ticketcorner sales platform, it is possible to see where the domestic guests are coming from. However, it is not known where the foreign visitors are coming from.
SBB has around 1400 events on its agenda throughout the year. These include events such as individual concerts, open-air festivals and public festivals. With the European Women's Football Championships, the Swiss Wrestling and Alpine Festival in Mollis GL and the "SwissSkills" professional championships in Bern, there are a particularly large number of major events on the agenda this year.
The additional trains will be operated by the Traffic Control Center (TCC) Mitte. Its head, Carlo Fasciati, explained that the TCC is working daily to ensure that the approximately 9700 passenger trains run as smoothly as possible.
The TCC has to "work its magic" around the ESC, Fasciati continued. In addition to the large number of extra trains, the departure times also make coordination difficult: for many SBB customers, the additional trains are the last possible connections home. Cancellations could therefore be particularly significant.
