VIENNA: Evening trains have made a comeback in Europe due to their low-carbon footprint, however after years of neglect, the renaissance has had a bumpy trip.
Operators admit that the trains are outdated — with passengers dealing with the occasional delays, technical issues or malfunctioning bogs — whereas corporations compete in an overloaded community.
Regardless of the challenges, nationwide rail operators are giving evening trains one other likelihood whereas startups are leaping on the bandwagon as local weather issues are making travellers ditch kerosene-burning planes for cleaner modes of transportation.
Sitting on the crossroads between western and jap Europe, Austria has been on the coronary heart of this revival with the backing of the federal government at the same time as low-cost airways threatened to relegate sleeper trains to the historical past books.
Austrian rail operator OeBB, a pioneer within the sector, has Europe’s largest fleet of evening trains, serving 1.5 million passengers in carriages that embody mattress compartments.
The state-owned firm thought of abandoning its in a single day companies at one level, nevertheless it went the other way and invested in them as a substitute.
“Our night trains are nearly fully booked,” OeBB spokesman Bernhard Rieder advised AFP as summer season journey is in full swing in Europe.
OeBB runs 20 routes connecting Vienna and different cities all through Europe.
“We have a long tradition with night train service,” Rieder mentioned, stating how the Alpine nation’s mountainous topography makes having high-speed connections troublesome.
Astrid Reiter, a 27-year-old guide, booked an evening prepare from Vienna to Zurich.
“It’s nice because you basically wake up in a different country,” she mentioned. “If everything works out well, it’s a very convenient way to travel.”
She added: “I do hope that other companies other than the Austrian railway company develop more night trains and make it easier to have faster night trains.”
Rieder admits that the standard of its service “is not always as high these days as what we want to deliver to our customers”.
“There was no demand and no request for night trains for over 25 years” inflicting manufacturing to grind to a halt, he mentioned.
In 2018, OeBB ordered 33 new evening trains from German conglomerate Siemens to develop its attain and exchange a part of its ageing fleet.
The primary trains — with a contemporary design, extra privateness and extra bathe services — are anticipated to enter service on the finish of this 12 months.
Chris Engelsman, co-founder of the Belgian-Dutch startup European Sleeper, additionally complained a couple of scarcity of “proper night train coaches”.
Established in 2021, his firm inaugurated a Berlin-Brussels hyperlink in Could.
“The train is not always up to the modern standards, but despite that many people would like to travel by night train and the enthusiasm is quite big,” he advised AFP.
“There are breakdowns sometimes or the toilets are not working or electricity is not working properly, things like that,” he added, blaming the “lack of investment for decades”.
Competitors from low-cost flights and an absence of coordination between completely different European rail operators and firms are different obstacles.
It’s troublesome to compete with some flights’ “unreasonably low” costs, in response to a current report by NGO Greenpeace, with the aviation sector benefitting from subsidies and tax exemptions.
Rail transport, however, is “subject to various taxes and fees,” specifically for utilizing the infrastructure, mentioned Philipp Kosok, an analyst on the German suppose tank Agora.
“Operating night trains is very difficult, complex and expensive,” Kosok mentioned, including that the infrastructure was “overloaded” even at evening when freight trains ply the rails.
There’s additionally no centralised website to seek the advice of timetables and examine costs, with some within the trade complaining of an absence of political will.
“There’s not really a European approach to train travel at the moment,” Engelsman mentioned.
French startup Midnight Trains co-founder Adrien Aumont mentioned his firm’s intention was to “reinvent” the evening prepare “to make it a truly competitive means of transport against aviation”.
Aumont had the concept to create the corporate when his associate “decided never to get on a plane again”.
His startup is partnering with an evening prepare maker to relaunch the as soon as widespread Paris-Milan-Venice line in 2025.
“I realised that it was almost impossible to travel in Europe (without flying). People were asked to get off the planes, but without necessarily offering them solutions,” he advised AFP.
He slammed a service that “has deteriorated” over time, removed from the legendary and splendid Orient Specific.
