New network of European sleeper trains planned
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
First, if you look at Europe as a whole, you will see that sleeper trains were never really dead. There are plenty of them in Germany and Eastern Europe. Often they go from large cities to holiday destinations and therefore are mainly used by people travelling for leisure.
The novelty of these new lines (be it this company or the transeuropean effort to connect european capitals with sleeper trains) is that they mostly travel business travellers, people who would usually have taken a place. As plane journeys are often the largest item in a company carbon account, they are betting that some will push their employees towards the train.
It might not be easy however. Track capacity at night is often severly limited by maintenance work in France for example and these trains will have to compete with rail freight transport at a time when Europe wants to massively develop rail freight.
It only seems useful if you're Paris based, since this appears to be the center node of the network.
edit: This at least appears to be the case for the French startup mentioned and the map displayed at the very top of the article.
https://www.nightjet.com/dam/jcr:6a8041cb-0131-4ad3-84fd-251...
The biggest issue is that they tend to be booked up weeks in advance so getting a slot in private compartment is pretty hard.
That’s France’s rail network in a nutshell. It’s great, if your trip starts or ends in Paris. If you’re not, you might still go through Paris and driving could be faster than a high-speed train.
The other issue with domestic sleeper networks in France, other than sounding like a terrorist, is that high speed trains usually take 3-4h anyway.
I think the only takers for an overnight equivalent would be tourists that can save a night of stay somewhere. And that’s if you’re not staying with family or friends.
And the trains are almost all electric, so it’s harder to make an argument for “slower, therefore less carbon burn”.
In the UK, experiences vary. The new Caledonian Sleeper (London-Highlands) is apparently a pretty rubbish experience. However, I took the Night Riviera (London - Cornwall) a few years ago and found it a pretty good experience even though I very nearly missed my stop in Truro. The problem for a business traveller is that you would need a shower.
The other problem facing the Caledonian sleeper is that London-Glasgow is only something like 4 hours and the day trains are very good. The same is not so true for getting out to Cornwall.
In my experience it was a near perfect form of travel. Arrive at a train station long after most people had gone home, board the train and fall asleep, wake up at the platform very early the next day. You lose practically no 'useful' time.*
The one thing which stopped us making use of it more frequently was the cost. It was generally more expensive than flying, much more expensive than driving and even more so now that we have a child.
* In fairness, it's pretty loud and not massively comfortable so if you are a light sleeper you might not get the full magic carpet effect.
While I'm happy to spend a little more for the sake of the environment we're talking something like 3-5x more expensive.
It's also ideal for getting a full day of work in either London/Glasgow and returning. Doing that by plane is also possible but is environmentally horrible and taxing, doing it by train eats into good chunks of the days either side.
Trains from Paddington to Truro run every hour, taking around 4h30m.
https://traintimes.org.uk/london/truro/09:30/today
Considering its 1/3 the distance from London to Glasgow it's quite slow, but it's still faster than driving.
Makes one wonder what it would do to the economics of train transportation if maintenance work was required to be carried out during daytime and passenger transportation was optimised for comfortable sleeper trains.
Trains work best when the track is used. That means trains need to leave often to keep the track busy. Leave at 9pm, and arrive at 7am sounds great, but you don't get anyone leaving at 2am, which means there isn't enough users to pay for all the infrastructure needed.
Day trains work because some people leave at 8am, some noon, some 6pm... You need enough riders to fill to 70% capacity 3 trains per hour for 13 hours a day just to break even on all the costs of running a train for a reasonable price. (the numbers are approximate and depend strongly on local details). The more often you can run nearly full trains the better. Your night trains can't do this.
I often just give up.
In that sense, flying somehow feels like a much more standardised and straightforward experience, despite a ton of different ticketing websites, airlines and airports which all have their own apps and gates and conditions etc, too.
Buy one ticket, and it asks you for money, the bill slot opens, you put money in, the bill slot closes, the ticket prints, and then the change return door opens. After you take your change, the change return door closes.
If you buy 4 tickets: it asks you for money, the bill slot opens, you put money in, the bill slot closes, the first ticket prints, and then the change return door opens, you take you change and then it closes. Then, the bill slot opens and closes, the second ticket prints, then the change return door opens and closes (repeat 2 more times). I know just the type of “meets the requirements” engineers that made this.
I think just betting on companies going for the better option carbon-wise won't be enough, it also needs price parity (or better) and more convenience than taking the plane
It's easy to sound like a luddite when talking about these things, but something has obviously been unintentionally lost when the ferry was replaced with a tunnel.
I've noticed that travelling with my noise cancelling headphones on precludes serendipity. What I mean is, 99% of the time I don't speak to someone when sitting on the train but every once in a while I get into a conversation and something comes of it. If I always have headphones on, I'm guaranteeing that will never happen.
Cars are not that big of a problem, especially if fully occupied, which I imagine is very often the case when going for holidays. And especially with increasing electrification, they will keep becoming lesser of a carbon footprint contributor.
The narrow holiday season is quite artificial: we live through the pandemic-induced work-from-home experience. rethinking why and when we travel in large numbers seems like a timely idea. Besides facilitating a sustainable migration this lowers the environmental burden at the destinations not to mention the enjoyment of less crowded facilities.
The train size / frequency etc could be worked-on although I suspect you can't achieve large multiple differences.
In any case its not about getting all the summer migration to happen via train. Its more appropriate to think of it as another justification to have a complete and streamlined rail network across Europe (this being another potentially significant and steady source of passengers).
Train travel is just too expensive.
The last sleeper train I took was Berlin-Budapest and that was 39€ in a six-bed room, which I personally prefer to economy flights, where the cheapest option is usually somewhere between 10pm and 7am. I can't wait to take another NightJet train.
Of course, just going from any place in Germany _to Berlin_ for that sleeper train can cost you upwards of 100€ if you don't book in advance.
People take the train in the same situations when they drive a car, and travel time isn't always the most important criterion.
Not always. I live on the south coast of the UK. If I had to get to Scottish cities such as Glasgow (450 miles) or Edinburgh in a single day's journey I would fly or take the train, but never consider driving - it would be an absolutely horrendous car journey (edit: at least 8 hours assuming perfect traffic).
I could go on.
Show me where a car is competitive for any of those routes. In addition, not even plane is competitive if you consider the airport to city transfer and back.
It also saves you, at least in the case of Paris, Europes most ghastly airport experience, which is CDG.
Has it become noticeably worse recently? I flew into and out of CDG with my family in 2015 and I can't say it seemed any worse than most (admittedly not very many) airports I've been through.
Compared with terminal 2F it's actually pleasant. 2F is a packed confused mess with no seating whatsoever. Well, there are some seats by my impression was 1 seat per 10 passengers.
My observation is that I'm livid in 100% of all cases flying from there once I'm boarding the plane. Wait time and accessibility (by RER or unreliable bus) are just awful.
Flying in is less bad (if you didn't check in luggage). Still, connectivity is pretty bad compared to other European airports. Just getting your ticket for the RER can be a frustrating experience.
One caveat: I never flew intercontinental or transferred there. It may be a better experience.
That must have been where we were. If that's "pretty bad", then no more so than any other European airport IME/AFAICR.
> Wait time and accessibility (by RER or unreliable bus) are just awful.
We took the RER both ways. Worked pretty well, I thought.
> Flying in is less bad (if you didn't check in luggage).
We did, and I can't recall any problem with that.
> Still, connectivity is pretty bad compared to other European airports. Just getting your ticket for the RER can be a frustrating experience.
IIRC we used the ticket-vending machines on the platform. Sure, the UI is usually somewhat cryptic on those anywhere -- did we overpay, again? Can't recall, but quite possible -- but no worse at CDG than anywhere else I can recall.
> One caveat: I never flew intercontinental or transferred there. It may be a better experience.
Me neither; Helsinki - Paris and back.
Either we had exceptional luck... Or maybe you've got a slightly irrational bee in your bonnet about CDG.
If you look at taxi + flight + taxi + night at hotel - the train will be attractive.
If we correctly price externalities (i.e. environmental cost) then the train should win hands down!
First thing the EU should do is to finally get rid of the aviation fuel tax exemption for intra-EU flights.
A train that leaves Paris the day before at 1347 and arrives at 0655 the next morning (current schedule) isn't as useful, unless what I really wanted was to spend all day in Copenhagen instead of half a day.
That's with several transfers. No way a direct train would take 17 hours for that connection. Most likely it'd leave late at night and arrive in the morning.
For a business trip, I'll often leave on the first flight out Monday morning and fly back Thursday night or Friday night. If the train changes that into leaving Sunday evening and returning Friday or Saturday morning, the "included" nights of accommodation aren't an actual benefit as compared to the competitive mode of travel. Instead, they're a fix to a problem that the train created.
There are trips where I'd rather arrive the night before, so I'm fresh and unrushed for the first morning's meeting. In that case, the train could be better as I'm already taking a night away from the family for performance reasons.
I would not be so certain on that one. The downside of trains is the massive infrastructure requirements. I don't think there are any privately funded and profitable tracks anywhere in Europe. Government pays for this, of course. Of course, if you only account for carbon dioxide, things can look different.
It is actually rather simple. Airports are extremely expensive of course, but if you build three airports you have three connections. Four airports give six. Five airports ten... Each of these connections require dedicated tracks if you want to go by train.
Surely, trains need less infrastructure than cars - a road to every building in the country? Government pays for this, of course.
https://greennews.ie/eu-airlines-propped-up-subsidies/ claims that small European airports are not profitable, and are propped up by government subsidies, which RyanAir uses to undercut competitor rates, and they essentially act as a subsidy to RyanAir.
Jet fuel is not taxed in the EU (same link), but diesel train fuel is taxed in the UK ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocarbon_Oil_Duty#Trains ).
Trains need that too. It can be a road from the train station to the building, or it can be tracks. However in the end every building sometimes need something delivered.
Maybe the trains allows you to downgrade the road to gravel, but trains still need the road network for that last mile.
A two-way road between every building, and space for on-road parking or space for off-road parking around every building, bloats out the space between buildings and lowers density in a way that makes cars more necessary. It's possible for thousands of people to live within a short walk distance of a train station without even resorting to residential towerblocks.
I agree we don't need large two-way roads everywhere. However we still need a lot of small roads everywhere because some things cannot be done well by humans walking.
The up front cost is enormous, the ongoing maintenance is huge regardless of usage.[1] says "deteriorating roads are forcing [American] motorists to spend nearly $130 billion each year on extra vehicle repairs and operating costs" and "The U.S. has [...] a $786 billion backlog of road and bridge capital needs. The bulk of the backlog ($435 billion) is in repairing existing roads, while $125 billion is needed for bridge repair, $120 billion for system expansion, and $105 billion for system enhancement (which includes safety enhancements, operational improvements, and environmental projects).", and of course the amount of people who die on roads, and the amount spent on motoring costs just because people have to run a car because everything is so far away because everyone has cars in a circular way.
Whereas if that wasn't such a convenient option, you'd be more likely to use parts which lasted longer, and not change them frivolously for fashion reasons, and standardise on pipe adapters, and have more local caches and stores instead of big central warehouses a long way away.
> "You won't get a heavy appliance down a mud path unless the delivery is scheduled for a few weeks after the last rain."
I'm not deliberately missing your point when I say this, but "it's impossible because that would require forward planning" does show society in a bit of an unfavourable light, doesn't it?
> "it's impossible because that would require forward planning" does show society in a bit of an unfavourable light, doesn't it?
Things break without warning. Or are you proposing we automatically replace our large appliances every few years even though they could probably last for 5 times longer? (even then you will still have random early failures). Not everything is worth repairing.
I agree gravel roads at the end of a train journey with motorised vehicles would also add a lot of value.
Small-ish gravel roads for occasional supply vehicles to travel down isn't the original "road network" that I was arguing about efficiency of - small gravel roads in a world built around walking distances wouldn't be a world where everyone could run a Honda Civic and drive in two-way lanes of traffic. That is, by "cars" I didn't mean "motorised vehicles", but "everyone has a car and uses it for most journeys, and the road network to support that".
All you needed to say was: the "wild west".
Trains provably added a lot of value for decades without cars, because cars didn't even exist yet.
Also the choice isn't between trains and poorly connected airports. You can build high speed rail connections between city centres and airports, and many cities do so.
It's easy to say, but if you look at the environmental impact, it really is too cheap. If airlines would pay the same tax on fuel as cars and were expected to compensate for their pollution, they'd be a lot less attractive.
The other factor is that air travel is consistently profitable in the EU, without subsidies. But the reverse is true of rail.
The simplest solution is just to impose a $100/ton carbon tax, and let the market figure it out. But EU bureaucrats seem intent on socialism and planned economies instead.
Socialism isn't really a dirty word in Europe (or anywhere else in the world) like it is in the USA. 20% of elected representatives in the EU are socialists.
So it's less "EU bureaucrats intent on socialism" and more the European zeitgeist.
Depends on which part of Europe. In former communist countries 'socialism' is associated with economic system of their communist past, while center-left politics is called 'social democracy'.
But you're right, the Eastern European parties call themselves "social democrats" and the Western parties call themselves "socialists"
Air travel is just too cheap.
There is too much finger pointing, though. Globally, air travel accounts for only a small proportion of emissions, which means it gets a disproportionate amount of attention at the expense of more important things.
They don't exist yet.
> Globally, air travel accounts for only a small proportion of emissions
Air travel is 2% of all global emissions. This is huge for such a small sector.
2% of global emissions is close to negligible. Certainly this does not warrant the constant media coverage against air travel on environmental grounds. This is the usual fluff while the real, hard problems are not discussed. Politics instead of pragmatism.
It's really important to go a such important problems in a pragmatic and systematic way, rather than following into PR and political games.
If air travel only accounts for 2% of emissions then whatever we do will have a very small impact overall. So do we really need to bother at the moment or at all? It's not targeted because it makes a difference but because it's politically easier for a number of reasons. People, especially on HN, should really see through this theatre.
For example in France they tried (very badly) to add further taxes on car fuel and that ended in riots. So now they say that they will ban air travel when a train alternative exists. That will make no difference on anything but they can claim that they are doing something (that seems to target the rich more than the poor, so even better).
>>[bellyfullofbac:] Can I have 2% of your paycheck then, if it's negligible?
>[mytailorisrich:] This is about prioritising issues
Maybe de-prioritise your wardrobe then?
[0] Of course, being stabbed with a hot poker is more pleasant than flying coach, but Amtrak's a lot more pleasant.
Railways also benefit from considerable cost economies of scale, similar to the post office, the internet and of course...short haul flights. I wonder what the cost of flying will be when passenger seat miles drop by a factor of 5-10.
Aumont was reluctant to give ticket prices, but said these would be competitive with that of a short-haul flight, including what he called the “hidden costs”.
“This includes what you would have to pay for baggage and things like taxis to and from the airport,” he said.
So it will cost more than a flight, but not by much.
>> Train travel is just too expensive.
Why do you say this? I travel through Europe by train a couple of times a year at least. It's certainly not "too expensive" and if you book early it comes out the same as flying.
If I'm booking time off work and the price is the same I'm going to opt for a longer holiday
Good luck Aumont
Sleeper trains go at night generally.
I mean, for me taking a holiday is time to slow down and enjoy the sights. I miss a hell of a lot of that when I fly.
I suspect it will not be possible for the night train to ever beat a short haul point to point on a Ryanair bike seat halfway across Europe between two major cities. But for anything more remote the night train will probably be quite competitive. After all, the infrastructure already exists for the most part.
Alongside your flight, you also need to pay for a taxis/Ubers/trains to and from the airport on each side, and a night in a hotel.
That can easily add an extra 300 Euro to your trip (one way).
You could even take the overnight train one way, and fly the other.