Last week, the EU transport ministers meeting concluded to make night trains a viable alternative to short- and medium haul flights. This is great news. Now we need concrete political measures to support the creation of many more night train connections in Europe.
Here is our comprehensive action plan how to do it – our General Position Paper, unanimously adopted by our Back on Track groups from nine European countries this April. This is the result of a three month consensus building process within our international volunteer network.
One of our key ideas was already picked up internally by the French SNCF this month: We demand that the European Commission should tender a comprehensive night train network, providing the necessary rolling stock. This could be done under a PSO (public service obligation) or on open access terms. The very same demand can now be found in an (internal) paper of SNCF (page 10), where they propose European PSOs for international night trains selected and financed by the Commission. This is a good sign everything is getting momentum!
We invite you to have a read:
How we get more night trains: Our General Position Paper