The last sleeper trains in Europe:
"A sleeper is the most civilised, comfortable, and romantic way to travel... " https://www.seat61.com/sleepers.htm
ParisVenice sounds tempting.
Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
221–230 of 274 posts
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Train infrastructure is pretty expensive. Planes need much less infrastructure.
Do they really though? I don't know any numbers, but i would imagine that the airports at least make up some if not all of the cost of equivalent railroads? I get that the airport can service a lot more destinations than a trainstation( overseas etc ), but i'm not totally convinced that rail infrastructure is that much more expensive than for air. The cost of airport security etc should probably also be thought of as…
The new high-speed connection between Berlin and Munich cost about eight million Euros per kilometer. That was a bit on the high side because acquiring the land was expensive. Switzerland spends about two billion Franks a year on maintenance of its tracks.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#223My experience is that flying inside Europe tends to be cheaper than long-distance train. Does anyone here whether it's simply intrinsically cheaper, or whether it's all because of kerosine subsidies etc? In other words, if countries would subsidize long-distance train as much as they subsidize air flight, would the economics look different? Would train get substantially cheaper? I lack both the insight and the data t…
Air travel is extremely tax-subsidized. If taxes on airplane fuel was similar to car petrol taxes in Europe that would be a good start. I hope there can be some sort of EU-wide agreement on that soon, because the current state of affairs is pretty silly and there is no way a single country can unilaterally impose high CO2 taxes on airlines.
trains are even more heavily subsidized so I don't understand the comment. the EU restricts subsidizing airlines and similar at all but the smallest fields and even has pursued having some airlines refund monies giving to them in violation of the rules. There are tax breaks in the form of not paying VAT for domestic flight routes but overall the cost for all air travel breaks is less than twenty billion Euros whereas subsidies for rail and worse the debts[2] for building and maintenance are ten to twenty times as much.
finally the one issue that stands out, is that while European members use rail at over five times the average of Americans it only works out to approximately 600 miles per year versus 100. Urban transport usage is only double the average use in American but that is a 120 uses per year versus 60. [1]
Then to make it even worse by focusing so much subsidies and expense on trying to convince people to take rail it has caused much more freight to end up on roads. In the US over forty percent of freight goes by rail, in the EU it is around eleven percent. So for the limited gains of moving people by rail are slaughtered by the losses in resulting environmental and financial impact of moving freight over roads.
The truth is many have this romantic view of rail travel which is not supported by facts. Politicians in the EU, where the lines are almost all government owned, love rail because its very visible and people don't look below the surface to see the reality of actual cost, debt load, and lack of real usage.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/5711595/KS-D...
[2] https://re.public.polimi.it/retrieve/handle/11311/1015984/18...
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#224Western Europe is very different from Eastern Europe in this case. In Western Europe, low-cost flights and buses essentially won the market. But there are not as many direct flights between Central and Eastern European cities, and the roads are often not that good, either. Therefore, in any direction from Budapest overnight trains are still very popular, and in countries like Ukraine it's probably the single most imp…
The airlines have basically put trains out of business in Western Europe. Currently you cannot get from one end of Denmark to the other for a morning meeting by train.
Last time I checked the only way to have a 9:00 meeting in the center of Copenhagen, leaving from Aalborg (400km away) is by leaving at 23:00 the day before. It's a 6.5 hour train ride. Flying is 20 minutes and you have multiple departures and airlines every morning (granted you have to be at the airport 20 minute early and it a 30 min trip for the airport to the center of Copenhagen).
When people talk about how great trains are in Europe, I assume they never had to used them. Trains absolutely suck, they aren't fast enough, not frequent enough and they are expensive. It cheaper and faster to fly or drive.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air travel is extremely tax-subsidized. If taxes on airplane fuel was similar to car petrol taxes in Europe that would be a good start. I hope there can be some sort of EU-wide agreement on that soon, because the current state of affairs is pretty silly and there is no way a single country can unilaterally impose high CO2 taxes on airlines.
trains are even more heavily subsidized so I don't understand the comment. the EU restricts subsidizing airlines and similar at all but the smallest fields and even has pursued having some airlines refund monies giving to them in violation of the rules. There are tax breaks in the form of not paying VAT for domestic flight routes but overall the cost for all air travel breaks is less than twenty billion Euros whereas…
> the EU restricts subsidizing airlines
I didn't mean subsidized in the sens of "tax money is given to airlines" I meant energy taxes for other means of transportation are much higher than for airplane fuel, which pay very low CO2 taxes compared e.g. to cars. That is: they are given an advantage through the CO2 taxation.
If planes paid for their CO2 emissions, we'd be closer to having the train be cheaper than flying.
Obviously we want both more passengers and freight to go by rail. To get there requires investments in infrastructure. Sweden being the most blatant example of where in the last 2 decades, rail infrastructure maintenance was the first thing cut to compensate whatever budget hole needed to be filled. It's now decades behind, and that's the main reason I can't take a train between Stockholm and Gothenburg and expect to make my meeting in time - instead I have to fly or drive this quite short bit, even though both the the time it takes and the cost is similar. The train simply isn't reliable enough to use to go to an important meeting.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air travel is extremely tax-subsidized. If taxes on airplane fuel was similar to car petrol taxes in Europe that would be a good start. I hope there can be some sort of EU-wide agreement on that soon, because the current state of affairs is pretty silly and there is no way a single country can unilaterally impose high CO2 taxes on airlines.
trains are even more heavily subsidized so I don't understand the comment. the EU restricts subsidizing airlines and similar at all but the smallest fields and even has pursued having some airlines refund monies giving to them in violation of the rules. There are tax breaks in the form of not paying VAT for domestic flight routes but overall the cost for all air travel breaks is less than twenty billion Euros whereas…
> trains are even more heavily subsidized so I don't understand the comment
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47783992
> Then to make it even worse by focusing so much subsidies and expense on trying to convince people to take rail it has caused much more freight to end up on roads.
Actually EU laws forbid countries to favour certain industries. That is exactly why freight go by road instead of rail despite causing more traffic and pollution.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#227My experience is that flying inside Europe tends to be cheaper than long-distance train. Does anyone here whether it's simply intrinsically cheaper, or whether it's all because of kerosine subsidies etc? In other words, if countries would subsidize long-distance train as much as they subsidize air flight, would the economics look different? Would train get substantially cheaper? I lack both the insight and the data t…
Air travel is extremely tax-subsidized. If taxes on airplane fuel was similar to car petrol taxes in Europe that would be a good start. I hope there can be some sort of EU-wide agreement on that soon, because the current state of affairs is pretty silly and there is no way a single country can unilaterally impose high CO2 taxes on airlines.
I'm not sure it's very subsidised in a cash sense - when I look at the breakdown on a cheap flight about half seems to be taxes. Whereas most countries railways receive direct cash from the taxpayer subsidies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies).
eg in the UK
>Air Passenger Duty (APD) for flights leaving the United Kingdom, and not for inbound flights. You are charged £26 per person on short haul economy flights to most of Europe, and £150 per person on long haul flights
Though you could argue that air-travel is not billed for the damage to the environment it causes in CO2 which is an indirect kind of subsidy.
An interesting future tech may be electric airliners eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zunum_Aero which could be cheaper than both and greenish.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#228Sleeper trains are doing fine in Central and Eastern Europe, despite having to contend with some long running times. Sweden is trying to revive them through Denmark, which hasn't hosted night trains since 2014 [1]. There's two viable, existing routes for trains between the Central Sweden and Northern Germany. One's through the Fehmarn Belt rail ferry, and another is the long way through Jutland. Both ways take a long…
There's also the Malmö-Berlin night train that takes the ferry between Trelleborg and Sassnitz. It doesn't go all year though.
And it's either very limited or very popular. I tried to make a booking in June yesterday and there are only two dates available.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#229Excited 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…
The ferry isn't too bad, I've taken it between Stockholm, Tallinn, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg. It's not like an all inclusive, nice experience like American cruises, but more minimalist (taking people, cars, and trucks). It's extremely cheap in the baltic sea and way cheaper than flight + hotel. It's a good experience all in all. Prices on board for food and shopping weren't bad at all. The ferries are also known a…
> The ferries are also known as booze cruises since Scandanavia has such high alcohol tax/gov. monopoly on alcohol, people buy a ton of it from the duty free store on board.
I've been on a few of these ferries and remember what looked like locals buying suitcase carts full of beer and liquor. On the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn I met a nice couple who explained how it was cheaper to take a day trip to Tallinn to shop than it was to shop in Helsinki. Much like when Americans drive to the outlet stores.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a Boston to Chicago route that is pretty cool. I took it to Chicago from Albany for less than $100 a few years ago. The only problem is that the schedule is kinda of aspirational. The train from NYC attaches in Albany, and the times often don’t line up. When the economy is good, the westward tracks are busy with frieight traffic so you wait. I enjoyed the trip though and got a lot of work done.
The Late, Slow Limited (Lake Shore Limited). Cool route through the rust belt. The shitty thing about the two East coast-Chicago routes is they dropped dining car service. Until recently sleeping car passengers got an actual on board full service restaurant prepared meal included in the ticket. They dropped this due to costs. Now there is just the cafe car and these airplane style meals included with sleeping car tic…
That is too bad. My experience was a few years back.
I’m built like a gorilla and airplane seats are often pretty tortuous for me.
The train experience is pretty cool in many ways, despite with the problems that exist. Even in NYC, I can show up 5m before the train leaves and be good to go, while airports have all sorts of bullshit to deal with. It’s a shame that the circumstances of the mid 20th century prevented us from having good, integrated transportation for passengers.