Especially in winter it is annoying as a resident of the region to miss the S-Bahn in the evening and then have to wait 40 minutes for the next one. That should change in a year. The Bavarian Ministry of Transport announced on Wednesday that an almost continuous 20-minute cycle would be implemented on the outer branches from Monday to Friday from December 2022. The Bavarian Railway Company (BEG), which plans regional and S-Bahn traffic in Bavaria on behalf of the Free State, orders an additional 775,000 train kilometers per year. According to Bavaria’s Transport Minister Kerstin Schreyer (CSU), this is the largest increase since 2005, when the ten-minute cycle was introduced on some sections. Schreyer also hopes that the additional offer will improve operational stability.
With a few exceptions, the continuous 20-minute cycle applies on all lines to the respective terminus, even outside of rush hour. Today, 40-minute intervals or 40/20 minute intervals are still common on the stations furthest away from Munich.
15 used trains from Hanover
For the improvements, 15 additional used ET 424 trains of the Hanover S-Bahn are being used. They will be modernized and delivered in autumn 2022. Because they cannot drive in the main line tunnel for technical reasons, they serve shuttle trips between Dachau and Altomünster on the S2 line, amplifier trips to the above-ground part of Munich Central Station on the S4, and the Geltendorf-Pasing-Höllriegelskreuth route on the S20. This frees up “Munich” trains of the type ET 423 in order to increase the offer on the lines that run through the main route. From the mid-2020s onwards, the vehicles from Hanover could then also be used for the planned line extensions to Wasserburg and to the BMW research center via the Nordring.