Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) unveiled an aggressive capacity boost on 4 May aimed at drawing motorists away from what it calls the “inevitable Ascension and Pentecost mega-jams” at the Gotthard tunnel. Between 14–17 May and 23–25 May, 58 additional long-distance services will link Zurich, Basel and Bern with Ticino, while EuroCity and TILO partners will extend several connections onward to Milan. In total, some 130,000 extra seats will be injected into the network.
![SBB adds 58 extra trains and 130,000 seats to Ticino and Italy for holiday weekends]()
Travelers who plan to continue beyond Switzerland—perhaps riding one of the reinforced EuroCity departures to Milan and then venturing farther afield—can handle the visa paperwork quickly through VisaHQ. The platform, found at https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/ offers step-by-step guidance, express processing and courier options for Italian and wider Schengen visas, letting companies lock in the new SBB train seats while VisaHQ secures the required travel documents in parallel.
SBB will lengthen existing InterCity sets, add double-decker coaches on the busy Zurich–Lugano axis and run holiday-only RE80 trains from Locarno to Milano Porta Garibaldi. Bicycle carriages on popular tourist departures now require advance reservation, and staffing rosters at border-control points inside the Ceneri Base Tunnel have been tightened to cope with the surge. For companies running weekend incentive trips or positioning technicians to Italian client sites, the rail uplift provides a time-certain alternative to unpredictable road conditions. Travel managers are being urged to pre-block seating allocations for groups and to alert employees that most of the bonus services are not visible in third-party global distribution systems; bookings must be made through SBB’s online portal or OBT-connected API. SBB’s capacity move also dovetails with Switzerland’s environmental goals. The Federal Office of Transport estimates that, if the extra trains run near full, up to 10,000 private cars could be kept off the A2 corridor during each holiday peak, cutting CO₂ emissions by roughly 500 tonnes. Authorities still expect congestion at several rail bottlenecks—including construction works near Lenzburg and single-track stretches on the Italian side—but say real-time updates will be pushed to SBB’s mobile app and to enterprise travel-management platforms integrated via Rail API 2.0.
Travelers who plan to continue beyond Switzerland—perhaps riding one of the reinforced EuroCity departures to Milan and then venturing farther afield—can handle the visa paperwork quickly through VisaHQ. The platform, found at https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/ offers step-by-step guidance, express processing and courier options for Italian and wider Schengen visas, letting companies lock in the new SBB train seats while VisaHQ secures the required travel documents in parallel.
SBB will lengthen existing InterCity sets, add double-decker coaches on the busy Zurich–Lugano axis and run holiday-only RE80 trains from Locarno to Milano Porta Garibaldi. Bicycle carriages on popular tourist departures now require advance reservation, and staffing rosters at border-control points inside the Ceneri Base Tunnel have been tightened to cope with the surge. For companies running weekend incentive trips or positioning technicians to Italian client sites, the rail uplift provides a time-certain alternative to unpredictable road conditions. Travel managers are being urged to pre-block seating allocations for groups and to alert employees that most of the bonus services are not visible in third-party global distribution systems; bookings must be made through SBB’s online portal or OBT-connected API. SBB’s capacity move also dovetails with Switzerland’s environmental goals. The Federal Office of Transport estimates that, if the extra trains run near full, up to 10,000 private cars could be kept off the A2 corridor during each holiday peak, cutting CO₂ emissions by roughly 500 tonnes. Authorities still expect congestion at several rail bottlenecks—including construction works near Lenzburg and single-track stretches on the Italian side—but say real-time updates will be pushed to SBB’s mobile app and to enterprise travel-management platforms integrated via Rail API 2.0.
