Basel rush hour

Transportation, Travel and Trips
1
Hi, on Monday I am planning on driving from Altendorf SZ to Badel Flughafen. My flight is at 10:30am and so I think I will miss the Zurich rush hour but might get caught in the Basel one. Does anyone have any experience of driving from Zurich area to Basel airport in the morning? And how much time should I leave? Thanks!

2
I cant comment on the traffic from direct experience. But I have heard the motorway does get quite busy around Basel at rush hour.

Why not take the train the bus from Basel SBB takes 15 mintutes and departs every 10-15 min right outside the station.

3
Cost of train and Bus ticket is about CHF 23.10 one way

06:08 Altendorf train to Zurich arrives 06:50

07:00 Zurich train to Basel SBB arrives 07:53

08:00 Basel Bus Nr 50 to Airport arrives 08:16

There is a bus every 7 minutes, so no stress there.

if you drive you have the stress, and you will arrive

about 30 minutes earlier, but then you have to park

the car and drag the suitcase to the check in, so

not much time saved.

The bus stops right in front of the terminal.

http://route.search.ch/?route=altend...+basel+airport

www.sbb.ch

4
There's rarely any traffic problems heading into Basel from the East and you should just breeze straight through on the motorway. My advice would be to cross into France still on the motorway, then take the first exit to the French side of the airport. Sometimes if there's a problem coming in from France it can spill over onto the slip roads you'd take to get to the airport on the Swiss side, so this will avoid any risk of that.

If it's just for a day or two I usually use the parking that's just a couple of minutes walk from the terminal - it's a bit more expensive than the further away bits, but not too bad just for a couple of days. Once inside the airport you can cross easily between the French and Swiss bits, so it won't matter which check-in you need.

5
Thank you all for your help! The reason I'm thinking of driving instead of train is because I will have a baby and a big suitcase and the thought of changing transport links three times sounds pretty stressful when I could just drive. I will be parking for a week so it will be a but pricey but at least when I arrive back on my return I will just be able to jump into the car with the baby and she will probably sleep on both journeys.

6
Conversly I've seen huge jams coming into Basel, and a friend from Kaiseraugst regualry get's caught in severe traffic coming into Basel. No-one can predict the traffic.

So to OP, make sure you leave in plenty of time, better to be sat in the airport bored than on the motorway stressed.

7
Well there's Swiss severe and then there's normal severe. I drove in along that stretch at that time every week day for a couple of years and yes, after Pratteln the traffic can slow, especially if its raining, but it will keep slowly moving and you will be through in easily 10 minutes - at its worse perhaps 20 minutes delay but more usually just slowing up through the Schweizehalle tunnel and it delays you by only a few minutes.

If the traffic really is bad (because of an accident) try to turn off at the Pratteln turning and take the diversion into Basel via Augst. once you get into Basel you can rejoin the motorway to get over the Rhein. or alternatively, keep to the right hand lanes as you come out of the Schweizehalle tunnel (signed Delémont and St Jacobs, Dreispitz) and travel along 2 km or so in these lanes and rejoin the airport and Basel lanes just as the Delémont/St Jacobs lanes turn off. Just to make it clear, I am not suggesting you do this as a matter of course .. but if you have been delayed, it is a suggestion to avoid getting stuck in more traffic and perhaps missing your flight, as the airport/city lanes are often clogged and slow moving whilst the Delémont/St Jacobs lane are moving freely (I was driving to dreispitz and was often very glad of this fact). You won't win friends trying to get back in to the airport/city lanes but at least you won't miss your flight.

Now, the few times I travelled to Heathrow along the A3 and M25 ... now that's a delay!

8
Hi

Up to 8am it is busy but as another poster said, the delay is usually only about 10mins where the motorway from Delemont joins. After 8.30 it's quieter.

Monday isn't worse than other mornings. The biggest problem IMHO is when we have half term and we have all the holiday cars piling through.

Also the above junction seems to attract accidents as people do lots of last second lane changing and dont seem to see cars breaking in front of them.

I witnessed a middle lane car dive in front of a lorry in the right hand lane even though the cars ahead of the lorry were breaking. The lorry swerved into the joining slip road lane from the Delemont direction; thankfully this was clear.

9
You are joking? I leave Basel heading towards Zurich at least twice a week and nearly always pass kilometers long traffic jams heading into Basel with traffic pretty much at a stand still including this morning. It does move slowly.

10
Well yes it looks like that but I drove from Liestal to Dreispitz for 2 years every week day (until 12 months ago so fairly recently) and I always hit this part of the road between 8.20 and 8.40 and whilst I did get slowed down and often came to a halt, it was very temporary (well 9 times out of 10) and I was usually out of the clogged traffic in 10 minutes. Very occasionally it was worse but it was only very occasionally. But I agree, the few times I took the train, it looked bad.

Driving that way on a Friday evening however is very very much worse - especially a Friday summers evening.

OP leave yourself an extra half hour, hopefully you will have few problems and plenty of time for a second breakfast at the airport.

11

No joke-exactly our current experience !

12
Hi all,

Is it better to take the local roads instead of the motorway when driving from Liestal to Birsfelden during the rush hour or they are equally congested?