Buses instead of trams in Bonn "The first day is always a mess"

Bonn · Bonn, All light rail lines are affected by cancellations until 10 August because the relay signal box at Bonn Central Station is being renewed. Some of the replacement buses are sometimes overloaded at the beginning of the day. This is how it turned out on the first day.

  Passengers run in front of a substitute number 16 bus to get their connection.

Passengers run in front of a substitute number 16 bus to get their connection.

Foto: Benjamin Westhoff

The city and the Stadtwerke Bonn (SWB) are using the summer holidays for construction projects that have an impact on rail traffic - in July it was the renovation of Oxfordstraße and the track renewals on both sides of the Rhine. Now another major undertaking by the Bonner Stadtwerke (SWB) has begun.

From 2 to 10 August, the Stadtwerke will complete the exchange of the electronic signal box at the main station, which they have been pushing for two years. All tram lines 16, 18, 63, 66, 67 and 68 will be temporarily suspended on certain routes (see "How the trams will run until 10 August"). During this time, SWB will use replacement buses. The trams 61, 62 and 65, which only run above ground, are not affected.

The tram replacement service starts without any problems on Tuesday morning, the first day of the construction work. Several SWB service employees stand at the Central Bus Station to send the sometimes-confused passengers to the replacement buses that take them to Olof-Palme-Allee on number 66 and to Bonn West or Dransdorf on numbers 16, 18, 63 and 68. One of the employees says: "There is always chaos on the first day." Most passengers don't know about the replacement service.

But the buses run reliably: They depart from the replacement stops at the specified frequency, and there is no sign of traffic chaos due to the higher number of buses in the morning around the main station and the Museum Mile. One drawback: "I didn't know where the substitute stop on Robert-Kirchhoff-Straße was, I couldn't find it at first," says a passenger at the main station.

Problems for senior citizens or people who do not speak German

A woman from Hürth gets on the replacement bus between Dransdorf and the main station at around 10 am. She, too, had not known about the cancellation of the trains: "At first, bus number 18 in Hürth said 'Bonn Hauptbahnhof' (Bonn main station) as usual, only the information board at the stop said that the train only goes to Dransdorf," she says. Instead of the 50 minutes to her job in Bonn, it now takes her an hour and a half. "It could have been worse," she says.

The changeover often causes problems for people who are older or do not speak German. Both are true for Marcam Alhaddad. He is reliant on a walking aid and wanted to travel from Tannenbusch to Bad Godesberg to see his doctor on Tuesday morning. Instead of being able to take line 63 through to Bad Godesberg, Alhaddad had to get off in Bonn West. He made it to the main station, but decided there: "I'm going back home now, I can't manage it," he says in English.

Things get more chaotic in the morning and afternoon. The buses in the direction of Olof-Palme-Allee as well as in the direction of Dransdorf become more crowded, the passengers' conversations revolve around the traffic situation: "It's very adventurous here today," a woman says into the phone.

Buses couldn’t always cope with the number of passengers

Gerti Sporny and Karl Schneider from Brühl were also not prepared for the replacement transport. They were waiting for the train at the platform in Dransdorf in the afternoon. "Around 11 o'clock, too many people came from the 18, and the bus driver couldn't take them all," says Gerti Sporny. "Some of the people got angry, which is understandable." The two wanted to spend a relaxed day in Bonn - "that worked out later," they say.

SWB confirms that at times there were not enough replacement buses between Dransdorf and Bonn Hauptbahnhof. There was a technical reason for this: "From our point of view, the passenger information did not work very smoothly today, because the changed timetables of the tram lines 16 and 18 were not entered into the VRS timetable information system," says deputy SWB press officer Veronika John. This led to overloading of the replacement buses from Dransdorf. John: "We quickly took corrective action and deployed more replacement buses there." The SWB app showed the correct connections on Tuesday.

Most passengers were well informed, says the press spokesperson, even if there were certainly people returning from holiday, for example, who missed out on the information. "We started our communication in mid-June and distributed it through all our channels, on buses and trains on the monitors and via leaflets, as well as on notices and passenger displays on the platforms," says John.

Claudia Lohray from Bornheim takes the train to work in Bonn every day - and was prepared accordingly. "It had been on the notice boards at the stops for some time," she confirms. For her, everything worked out well on Tuesday: "The buses and the trains were well timed, I didn't have to wait long, and the buses were also air-conditioned," she says.

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