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Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
171–180 of 274 posts
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes it unfair? Just curious. Is it subsidized in some fashion that trains are not?
In most EU states, there are VAT exemptions for the fuel used in domestic and intra-EU flights, while no similar exemptions exist for the fuel used in trains (and cars). Likewise, there exist VAT exemptions for plane tickets. At least in Portugal, querosene is also exempt from the ISP (tax on the petroleum products). VAT and ISP make up more than half of the retail price of diesel and is almost 2/3 of the price of ga…
Portugal has a huge tax on petroleum products compared to other EU countries anyway. We paid 1.75€ per liter of gas last summer.
If they did't extempt kerosene, Spain would get its share of its tourists.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#173Low-Tech Magazine had a nice article about the trouble with the European rail network: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/trains/
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#174Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
In most EU states, there are VAT exemptions for the fuel used in domestic and intra-EU flights, while no similar exemptions exist for the fuel used in trains (and cars). Likewise, there exist VAT exemptions for plane tickets. At least in Portugal, querosene is also exempt from the ISP (tax on the petroleum products). VAT and ISP make up more than half of the retail price of diesel and is almost 2/3 of the price of ga…
Portugal has a huge tax on petroleum products compared to other EU countries anyway. We paid 1.75€ per liter of gas last summer. If they did't extempt kerosene, Spain would get its share of its tourists.
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Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#176Excited about this idea. I wanted to do an overnight train in a Europe trip I did last year, but the timing and quality never quite worked out. A lot of the time, trains between cities in western Europe are annoyingly long for a day trip, but slightly _too short_ for overnight trips - almost like an NYC->London red-eye, where you arrive just after you fall asleep. The couple of overnight trains I saw that seemed like…
Next time take the ferry. The so called Danskebåten is an experience all by itself. Many Norwegians do round trips just for the party. Also you will be able to buy duty free and save a fortune (assuming you drink alcohol).
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#177I'm traveling from Gothenburg to Berlin basically on at least a monthly basis. Ever since I moved to Sweden 2005 I was looking for night trains to bring me to the continent but there weren't any.
Early on I took day trains but they took so much time that I never had wiggle time and since the Deutsche Bahn got private they are notoriously late which meant that most of the time I wouldn't catch the last train from Copenhagen and needed to take a expensive taxi for the last hundred of kilometers late during the night after a 16 hour journey.
The weird thing is that the flights just go on time and even though it takes time to get to and from the airport it's possible to calculate the time when you will arrive, ect. which is really important with businesses. With Deutsche Bahn you basically never know if you will arrive on the day they promised or not.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#178So back in Russia a trip from my home town to Moscow on a plane takes about 6 hours in total. - get to the airport about 1 hour in advance - about 1.5 hour drive - The flight with all the procedures takes about 2 hours - All the exit procedures can take up to 0.5 hours easily if no longer - Wait for a train and ride to the city on the train - about 1 hour. - Once in the city get on subway and ride to destination - us…
it would be fun to take a trans-siberian rail ... except it takes like what ...7 days? eats up vacation time pretty quickly.
Isn’t that the charm?
My issue was more with recent tickets I’ve seen being pretty expensive.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#179I'm traveling from Gothenburg to Berlin basically on at least a monthly basis. Ever since I moved to Sweden 2005 I was looking for night trains to bring me to the continent but there weren't any. Early on I took day trains but they took so much time that I never had wiggle time and since the Deutsche Bahn got private they are notoriously late which meant that most of the time I wouldn't catch the last train from Cope…
I travelled Stockholm-Copenhagen biweekly for a couple of years, and flying was cheaper and faster door-to-door than the train pretty much 100% of the time. That includes getting through airport security and taking public transportation to/from the airports at either end.
I mean, I would have preferred to take the train, but I'm not going to pay more to get there slower...
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly if the unfair competition from budget airlines doesn't stop I don't see overnight trains coming back in any significant way any time soon. Edit: If you're wondering what I find unfair about it, I'm mainly concerned about the lack of taxes on kerosine.
What makes it unfair? Just curious. Is it subsidized in some fashion that trains are not?
I remember reading that EasyJet and Ryanair get subsidies from regional Airport authorities. They also regularly threaten to shut down their bases at said airports when they don’t get their way with pilot unions and so on.