The track access charging system of the German rail infrastructure operator DB Netz, which will be valid from 2024, hides a little goodie for night trains.
Photo: „Bunte Gleise“ CC-BY-SA 3.0 Sebastian Sooth (sebaso)
First the bad news: the track access charges for long-distance passenger transport will be raised by a total of 3.6% – not particularly surprising in view of last year’s inflation of 8%. To our regret, this increase also applies to night trains, because DB Netz unfortunately does not make any difference there (although night trains covering 800-1800 km in 10-16 hours once a day actually represent a completely different market segment than the ICE trains covering 600-800 km in 4-6 hours several times a day).
On the other hand, there is an exception for night trains, defined as trains that carry at least one sleeper or delivery van and run completely through the period from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. (this also applies to the non-German part of the route, of course) from 2024: for them and only for them, the night tariff applies for the entire journey. Does DB Netz perhaps regard the night trains that still exist as something like a segment after all? Until now, they were only allowed to use the night tariff like everyone else between 23:00 and 06:00 and from and to the first regular stop.
Foto: CC-BY-SA Patrick Neumann/back-on-track.eu
Will this make existing night trains cheaper and more competitive? Not really. It will have no effect on night train routes that were already optimised for the current German pricing system. For example, the European Sleeper, which has been connecting Berlin with Brussels since May 2023, has not been running outside of the night tariff, only stopping in Berlin and Bad Bentheim. For the young cooperative from the Netherlands, DB Netz therefore only has a price increase of 3.6% on offer. But maybe a stop in Hannover would now become possible. This also applies to the Snälltåget from Stockholm, which has so far – most likely deliberately – called at Hamburg just before 06:00, meaning that the rest of the journey to Berlin did still fall within the night tariff. Here, the new system at offers at least some hope for passengers who want to get off in Hamburg that Snälltåget will soon be able to afford more attractive disembarkation times here.
There are other examples where it could become somewhat cheaper. like for the Nightjet from Vienna to Brussels. If this train no longer has to pay the higher basic fare on the outward journey inbetween Bonn and Aachen, the total costs of the German part of the route (for the outward and return journey) will fall by some 5%. These savings however, do unfortunately not even amount to one euro per ticket. So even here, price reductions are not to be expected.
Photo: CC-BY-SA Patrick Neumann/back-on-track.eu (left) Juri Maier/back-on-track.eu (right)
A real difference could be made by the special regulation for night trains, which does not yet exist for good reasons, because so far they have not been profitable due to the track price system. For example, a night train from Berlin to Rome could now be more profitable if the basic fare is no longer charged up to and from the first stop after Munich (e.g. Ingolstadt or Nuremberg). According to our calculations, the new model reduces the train path costs of such a route by almost 15%. For a new Nighhtjet with 256 seats and an average load factor of 80%, this would mean an additional margin of almost €4 per ticket. For routes that were already barely profitable, this should improve the calculation. It is therefore perhaps no coincidence that ÖBB is launching its new Berlin-Brussels and Berlin-Paris night trains across Germany when the cheaper route toll comes into force. In any case, the continuous night tariff will help to extend existing services: e.g. the Nightjet Munich-Rome, which is already running.
Another piece of good news. DB Netz has also calculated how high the share of direct costs for train traffic is. These are the pure costs for operation and maintenance of the rail system apportioned to the number of trains, i.e. without apportioning the original investment costs. Also because the German network is now operating at its capacity limits again, this share has fallen drastically with the new train path pricing system, from €1.50/km to €1.07/km. This puts the German marginal costs in the middle of the European range. However, this also means that DB Netz’s margin for manoeuvre has obviously increased.
Good conditions for our demand: To noticeably improve the competitiveness of night trains by lowering the track prices for night train tickets to the level of the direct costs in order to open up the offer to broader sections of the population in the future!