Un bus “de luxe” pour relier Zurich à Barcelone : un nouveau projet de transport innovant

Less polluting than the plane, cheaper than the night train, and less uncomfortable than existing buses like Flixbus. This is the ambition of a Zurich-based company that aims to implement competitive transportation on two routes: Zurich – Barcelona and Geneva – Antwerp, via Brussels. It would be a kind of “luxury” bus, with a level of comfort at least equivalent to that of the train, and with reclining seats.

But this is precisely one of the obstacles described by Luca Bortolani, who has already founded the company Twiliner in Zurich, in Thursday’s “Tages-Anzeiger”. There are notably problems with the approval of seat belts, which do not adequately fulfill their role in the event of an accident when the seat is fully reclined.

His bus project would consist of vehicles with barely twenty seats. So is it really that eco-friendly? The entrepreneur has already planned for his vehicles to be powered by biodiesel and he assures that a trip from Zurich to Barcelona would produce 93% less greenhouse gases than the same trip by plane. He estimates that a trip on the line would cost an average of 230 francs per person, which is often more than an identical trip by plane, but often less than a night train.

It should be noted that the comparison is complicated: there is currently no night train connection between Switzerland and Barcelona. Today, it is mainly the Austrian company ÖBB that has developed various lines from Zurich, including to Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Zagreb.