Rail weekend to Germany: up to two hours more travel time
Construction work hits the Basel–Offenburg route this weekend. A new ETH study also shows how much time already sits in the regular timetable.
Anyone setting off by train towards Germany on Saturday, 19 September, should not plan the trip from memory. Because of construction work between Müllheim and Offenburg, services on the Basel SBB–Offenburg connection will be cancelled from Friday evening until Monday morning. For the replacement connections, SBB expects travel times 60 to 120 minutes longer.
Between Basel SBB and Müllheim, one train per hour is planned in each direction; between Müllheim and Offenburg, replacement buses run. A few through ICE services are diverted between Offenburg and Zurich and stop only in Singen. For the concrete departure and the connections, the current online timetable is authoritative. These details describe the announced construction timetable, not a forecast of the actual operating situation on the day of travel.
The connection is part of the product
The interruption makes one everyday feature of rail travel particularly visible: what matters is the whole journey. A fast train on one section is of little use if there is a long wait before or after it. For a short weekend trip, the time between two means of transport can weigh more heavily than a small increase in speed en route.
This is exactly the relationship examined by a study from ETH Zurich presented in August. The research team led by Francesco Corman, with lead author Matthias Benjamin Andrews García, analysed connections between more than 31,000 European stations. Instead of looking only at route lengths and speeds, it compared the timetables with a hypothetically optimal coordination of existing train services.
On the European average, the travel-time efficiency measured this way is around 75 percent. This yields a theoretical potential of roughly a quarter of travel time. That does not mean that every journey next Saturday could simply be shortened by 25 percent. The comparison serves to make the influence of connections visible; it is not a ready-to-implement replacement timetable.
Why Germany can also score well
On this metric, ETH counts Switzerland and Germany among the well-integrated networks. Anyone who recently missed a connection may find that surprising. The apparent contradiction dissolves once the measures are separated. A timetable that is well coordinated on paper does not yet mean that the scheduled trains actually run on time.
SBB explains its operational measurement differently: in its punctuality statistics, a train counts as punctual with less than three minutes of delay. Connection punctuality is about whether the necessary transfer time is guaranteed. Such figures check compliance with the service. The ETH question, by contrast, concerns how favourably that service is constructed in terms of time.
Both perspectives are needed. Short connections can speed up the scheduled journey, while travellers at the same time need a reliable transfer option. A single percentage figure does not fully describe this quality. For an individual travel decision, luggage, orientation in the station and the next connection should something go wrong also count.
New routes and better coordination
Besides the existing situation, the scientific article also examines infrastructure projects and long-term scenarios. Its value lies in considering investment and timetable coordination together. An expansion project can save travel time; international coordination helps decide whether that gain is passed through all the way to the destination or is lost again at the next transfer.
This does not produce a simple ranking in which new tracks would be unnecessary. Nor can a Europe-wide model calculation be used to derive the cause of a specific weekend closure. Construction operations, long-term network planning and day-to-day reliability are different tasks. For travellers, they act on the same quantity: the arrival time.
Look at the whole journey before setting off
For this weekend, it is therefore worth looking beyond the first train number. Do all the transfers work? Where does the replacement bus section begin? Does the return journey still fit the planned stay? A connection saved earlier should be checked again. Anyone with a fixed appointment at the destination should not base their planning on the usual timetable alone.
The longer-term lesson goes beyond the construction site. An attractive rail journey does not arise only where trains run particularly fast. It also arises where connections fit together. On the platform, that difference is often more noticeable than any top speed.
Sources
SBB: Construction work and timetable changes in Europe · ETH Zurich: study on timetable coordination · Original study: Journal of Transport Geography · SBB: definitions of punctuality
