| ▶ The announcement that the Paris–Vienna night train will be cancelled is yet another example of how Europe continues to fail at making cross-border passenger rail work. ▶ ALLRAIL fully supports night trains – several of our members operate them successfully. But this cancellation exposes two persistent structural problems that keep Europe’s cross-border rail sector stuck in the past: |
| 1. Addiction to Subsidies Instead of Building a Market Paris and Vienna are two of Europe’s most popular capital cities. Yet as soon as the French government halted its taxpayer subsidy due to budget cuts, the two state incumbents operating the service jointly – Austria’s ÖBB and France’s SNCF – simply shut it down. Why did they not use the past four years of public funding as a ramp-up phase to build a self-sustaining, commercially viable market? It can be done. Comparison: The ÖBB/SNCF Paris–Vienna service ran three times a week in each direction – roughly 312 departures per year. That’s almost identical to the Stockholm–Berlin night train operated by the independent carrier Snälltåget which will run around 330 departures in 2025.Snälltåget operates commercially – under Open Access, without ongoing subsidies.So why are ÖBB and SNCF unable to do the same? 2. Lack of Visibility Means Fewer Passengers To make matters worse, the ÖBB/SNCF night train was not even sold on SNCF Connect, France’s market-dominant online rail ticket sales platform.As a result, many potential passengers never even knew the train existed. Without proper visibility and multichannel ticket sales, it is extremely difficult for any Open Access service – no matter how promising – to achieve commercial viability. The Solution: Enable More Commercially Viable Open Access Night Trains To build a thriving, passenger-focused night train market, Europe needs to ensure: ▶Non-discriminatory access to rolling stock and its financing ▶Lower, fairer Track Access Charges (TACs) ▶Impartial, multichannel ticket sales – all willing operators must be visible and bookable on dominant rail ticket sales platforms Only under these conditions will we see a true revival of night trains – competitive, passenger-focused, and no longer held back by the financial limitations of national governments. |