Swiss Rail Tops Performance Ranking; Cucumber Controversy Concluded; Basel Graffiti Art Book Hits Shelves; Big Changes for Swiss Rail Timetables

News on 26 May 2015

As the holiday travel season approaches, you may have been pondering the reliability of the different modes of travel you will encounter.  You would not be alone in this endeavor as a report commissioned by the European Railway Commission and delivered by the Paris office of the Boston Consulting Group, a management consultancy studies just these types of facts.  If your plans were to travel by train throughout Switzerland, you're in luck.  The report confirms the conventional wisdom that Swiss trains are the best performing among its european peers - timeliness was only one of the factors in determining performance, in addition to speed, safety, affordability, and quality of service.  It may seem obvious, but one of the most meaningful insights in the report is that those countries spending the most on their rail system correlates highly with their performance rankings.  As with all other European rail systems, the Swiss system also relies heavily on government subsidies. despite its popularity and high ridership, the Swiss rail system still needed a 2.2billion swiss franc subsidy to deliver its service.  Swiss citizens obviously believe in their rail service as they've approved the subsidies in repeated referendums over recent years.

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For the last 100 years, Swiss vegetable producers operating their enterprises directly bordering Germany have benefitted from a government concession allowing their crops to be grown in Germany, and being able to sell it in Switzerland with the Swiss Guarantee label.  Furthermore, the growers could import the products into Switzerland without customs duties.  The requirement was simply that both the company's office and growing lands be within 10 kilometers of the border. This arrangement however - which evolved from the needs of Basel based food growers without access to farming acreage - has now changed much to the chagrin of affected growers.  At a General Meeting of the Swiss Vegetable Producers Association recently, a referendum determined that such arrangements while allowed to continue will require that the vegetables grown in such a manner to no longer be labeled "swiss guaranteed".  As a concession to affected farmers, the association will allow the labeling to continue for members of the Swiss Farmer's Union on vegetables that have been grown on the same German land prior to January 2014.

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A new guide to StreetArt has been published for the Basel region.  The 240 page book by Kai Hendrik Schlusche is written in English and German and explores and celebrates the innovative art form with maps, pictures and tour guides.  The book features street art by such local artists as Mark Gmehling who is an accomplished commercial and artistic muralist whose works have been spotted all over the world, and most notably in the Dreilander area of Basel.  For those not convinced that Street Art isn't simply Graffiti, the book provides a comprehensive survey of the art form and where the hot spots of Basel's ever-changing Street Art landscape are to be found.  The book is the first of its kind for the Basel area, and follows in the tradition of such compendiums available for other global street art hotspots in Munich, Barcelona, Paris and London.  Published by Gudberg Nerger Publishers of Hamburg, the book can be found at your favorite booksellers or online for about 20 Euros.

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Starting this December the largest changes to the Swiss national rail timetables will go into effect since the last initiative of its scope in the year 2000.  Most affected will be commuters that rely on the service for transport along the east-west corridors of the rail system.  If you're wondering why the SBB would tinker with a system that's been lauded as the world's best performing, their reasoning is simple.  Traffic and commuter volumes are expected to continue to increase, which has led to significant investments in infrastructure projects - especially in Zurich and the Lake Geneva areas.  Roughly 30 billion Swiss Francs will have been spent by 2030 on upgrading and expanding rail lines to handle the expected traffic loads.  This will specifically affect commuter travel times and schedules between Basel and Zurich, The Zurich Airport.  In addition, new, faster services will become available between Basel and international destinations like Hamburg and Frankfurt.