Saragossa Loses 50 Buses in a Day as Heatwave Cripples European Public Transport

A single afternoon of 40-degree heat knocked out 50 buses in Saragossa on 23 June, leaving passengers stranded for more than half an hour. The city’s Sattra union blamed poor maintenance of the fleet; many drivers simply could not start their shifts. The next day the tram system shut down entirely after an electrical defect in the battery system.

The breakdowns are not isolated. A project called Climameter, analysing data up to 22 June, found the current heatwave has pushed West European temperatures up by as much as 4 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial norms. The consequences for buses, trams and trains are mounting across the continent.

In Heidelberg, tram lines 23 and 24 were halted on 22 June because the bitumen filler between tracks and asphalt had softened and gummed up the rails. In Cologne, two air-conditioning units failed in a KVB data centre on 19 June, forcing servers offline. For days neither the passenger app nor the departure boards worked.

The near-miss fire on the Main-Weser line shows how quickly heat can turn mechanical failures into serious hazards. For UK employers, fire safety is a legal responsibility under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order. A free Fire Safety Toolkit gives you a complete risk assessment template, evacuation plan, and fire extinguisher training materials to help you stay compliant. Download the free Fire Safety Toolkit

The Main-Weser railway line near Karben saw a near-miss accident on 23 June. Around 14:30, overheated brakes on a train sent sparks into dry vegetation, igniting a slope fire. Some 200 passengers were evacuated. The flames spread to a garden shed and a pile of timber.

The heatwave has exposed stark differences in the readiness of rolling stock. In Berlin, new U-Bahn trains without air conditioning underwent their first heat-stress test on 24 June. Hamburg’s entire bus fleet is air-conditioned, but on the rails 126 older DT4 units cannot be retrofitted with cooling; only the newer DT5 models have it.

Vienna fares better: 80 percent of its entire fleet is air-conditioned. Among U-Bahn trains, 114 of 162 are cooled; for trams the figure is 306 out of 507. Once outdoor temperatures hit 25 °C, the Wiener Linien automatically cool compartments by about five degrees. They deliberately avoid deeper cooling to save energy and protect passengers’ circulation.

Rome’s electric buses struggled the most. Air conditioning consumed so much power that battery range collapsed. The Austrian transport club VCÖ also warned of asphalt at bus stops heating up to 60 °C – a serious health risk for elderly and ill passengers.

Asphalt temperatures hitting 60 °C at bus stops are a stark reminder that extreme heat creates health risks for the public. UK employers have duties under the Health & Safety at Work Act to protect employees and visitors from such hazards. A free Health & Safety Toolkit provides ready-to-use risk assessments and checklists covering extreme weather and workplace conditions — trusted by over 37,000 UK businesses. Download the free Health & Safety Toolkit

Scientific data confirms the trend. Climameter measured peak temperatures in Munich on 22 June that were 2.3 °C higher than comparable weather patterns in the last century; Frankfurt was 1.7 °C warmer, Berlin 1.2 °C. A separate study in the journal Nature by the ECMWF shows extreme heat stress now occurs in Southern Europe 2.5 times more often than in the 1970s.

The fallout goes beyond transport. In mid-June, a reactor at France’s Golfech nuclear power plant had to be taken offline because the Garonne river water topped 28 °C – too warm for cooling.

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