Because it is at the heart of a region of more than 920,000 inhabitantsbecause it is the capital of the pharmaceutical and chemical industrybecause its suburbs lie somewhere between Germany and France, Basel has always looked beyond its own borders.
The backbone of the Basel tri-national Eurodistrict has a curious name, Trireno. Behind this acronym lies an RER network stretching over 350 km between Switzerland, France and Germany. Scheduled for completion in 2030, it will carry more than 40 million passengers a year.. This network is the result of cooperation between seven regional transport authorities from Germany, France and Switzerland. And therein lies the problem.
Cooperation between railway authorities and politicians in the three countries is not always in unison. This is particularly true for a project that was first mooted in the 1990s, officially launched in 2010/2011 and which will not finally be completed until 2028. This project is the rail link to the Basel-Mulhouse Euroairport.. The Basel cantonal authorities came face to face with the institutions of the Haut-Rhin and Alsace regions.
Europe's last major airport without a rail link
With traffic of more than nine million passengers in 2019, l'Euroairport is the 5th regional airport in France and the third largest in Switzerland. It provides jobs for 6,300 people. But it is also one of the last of its size not to have its own rail service in Europe. The result: a saturation of road access to the platform, particularly from Basel.
However, the rail shuttle project has the support of the Grand Est Region (which succeeded the Alsace Region), the Swiss Federal Transport Councilof SNCF Réseau and theairport. But the financing was the subject of numerous negotiations, to which were added environmental and structural constraints. For example, the railway line will replace an existing road serving the Saint-Louis conurbation. And it will have to be built elsewhere.
We are talking about a total cost of 250 million to build a six-kilometre rail link passing along the platform's territory. The investment also includes a station directly linked to the terminal. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2024.
Opening in 2028, six regional, French and Swiss trains will then serve the airport every hour in each direction.
In the future configuration, a RER Trireno will link Basel to the Euroairport every ten minutes. Mulhouse will benefit from a service every 15 minutes. Two trains an hour will continue directly to Colmar and Strasbourg. Connections at Basel SBB's main station will also allow passengers to reach Zurich, Bern but also Freiburg in Germany.
Future air hub for the whole of Alsace
But above all the journey times will be drastically reduced. It will only take 12-minute journey between Mulhouse town centre and the platform compared with 32 minutes today; the journey between Basel SBB station and the airport will be cut from 18 to 10 minutes. From Strasbourg, travellers will reach the airport in just over an hour.
According to traffic studies, the new "EuroAirport" halt will experience the following effects as soon as it is brought into service 5.8 million passengers a year. This will propel her into second place in Alsace behind Strasbourg by its traffic. It will also make it possible to shift 33% of current road traffic to the Euroairport. This means around 470,000 fewer cars and 100,000 fewer buses on the roads.
In the meantime, a website has been set up to make passengers dream, allowing them to compare current and future journey times to the Euroairport. The aim is clear: to prove that Basel-Mulhouse is the gateway to air travel for the whole of Alsace.
