[Creativity] From Basel with love: Hearts won the new Basel S-Bahn livery

The Swiss tradition of referendums reaches the rail too. This time, new designs of S-Bahn Basel was at stake. 

There were two designs available on the SBB website to vote: One of them is a heart combining the flag colors of Switzerland, Germany, and France. The second one is dots – spreading in four directions, each indicating direction from Basel towards the respective nation – German to the north, France to the west and Switzerland to the east. Hearts prevailed among the totally 2,100 votes and the new logo will start to be installed on Flirt trains since spring 2020.

SBB uses 42 of the 4-car low-floor Stadler FLIRT EMUs in SBB livery to move commuters on its S-Bahn lines around the Basel region. These are designated as classes RABe 521,522 and 523. The new hearts will be placed right behind the drivers’ cab since spring 2020.

In this S-Bahn project, SBB is a part of the Trireno –the tri-national S-Bahn that extends in seven branches over the area of ​​the cross-border agglomeration Basel and also includes cooperation with DB, EFA Baden-Württemberg, TER Grand Est (SNCF) and Vialsace.