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Trains between Geneva and Cointrin airport cancelled this Saturday

Passengers flying out of Geneva’s Cointrin airport should allow extra time to get there this weekend.

Published: 3 October 2017 12:01 CEST

Trains between Geneva and Cointrin airport cancelled this Saturday

Photo: Nicholas Ratzenboeck/SBB

Due to maintenance works on the track, no trains will run between Geneva’s main rail station (Cornavin) and the airport from 4am on Saturday October 7th to 9am on Sunday October 8th, Swiss federal railways (SBB) said in a statement reported by 20 Minutes.

Customers are advised to take the number five bus from Cornavin rail station to the airport.

There will also be a replacement bus service running between Nyon and the airport every 15 minutes.

Rail services will also be disrupted on the Geneva-Lausanne line from 11pm on Sunday night until Thursday, with several trains replaced by buses between Geneva and Nyon.

Passengers should allow an extra 20 minutes for their journey, said SBB.

Swedish government shelves plans for two fast train links

In an announcement slipped out just before Christmas Eve, the government said it had instructed the Swedish Transport Administration to stop all planning for the Borås to Gothenburg link, stop the ongoing work on linking Hässleholm and Lund.

“The government wants investments made in the railway system to first and foremost make it easier for commuting and cargo traffic, because that promotes jobs and growth,” infrastructure minister Andreas Carlson said in a press release. “Our approach is for all investments in the railways that are made to be more cost effective than if the original plan for new trunk lines was followed.”

Ulf Olsson, the Social Democrat mayor in Borås, told the TT newswire that the decision was “a catastrophe”.

“We already have Sweden’s slowest railway, so it’s totally unrealistic to try to build on the existing railway,” he said. We are Sweden’s third biggest commuting region and have no functioning rail system, and to release this the day before Christmas Eve is pretty symptomatic.”

Per Tryding, the deputy chief executive for the Southern Sweden Chamber of Commerce, complained that the decision meant Skåne, Sweden’s most southerly county, would now have no major rail infrastructure projects.

“Now the only big investment in Skåne which was in the plan is disappearing, and Skåne already lay far behind Gothenburg and Stockholm,” he said.

“This is going to cause real problems and one thing that is certain that it’s going to take a very long time, whatever they eventually decide. It’s extremely strange to want to first suspend everything and then do an analysis instead of doing it the other way around.”

The government’s instructions to the transport agency will also mean that there will be no further planning on the so-called central parts of the new planned trunk lines, between Linköping and Borås and Hässleholm and Jönköping.

Carlson said that the government was prioritising “the existing rail network, better road standards, and a build-out of charging infrastructure”.

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