Europe's sleeper trains to disappear?

[bikkuri bahn]

Looks like it's not only Japan seeing the end of many of these trains...

 

Deutsche Bahn, the German rail provider, confirmed this month that its City Night Line sleeper trains on the Climate Express route would cease from 1 November, while the night train that connects Paris to Berlin, Hamburg and Munich will be stopped from December. The Amsterdam to Prague and Warsaw sleeper will be cut back to run from Cologne to Warsaw and Prague....

 

German rail services cite declining passenger numbers, caused by the rise of low-budget airlines, as the main reason for phasing out services. A spokesperson from Die Bahn said its night-train customers had fallen by 25% over the past five years, while its three least profitable sleeper lines had turned a loss of €12m....

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/europe-night-trains-sleeper-service

[kvp]

The most visible example was the orient express. Once running from Paris to Istanbul (with direct coaches from London), it was gradually cut back as the european high speed network got larger and larger. In the early 21th century it was running as a standard euronight train between Paris and Budapest. The last real orient express was an OBB euronight service between Strasbourg and Vienna. It got discontinued with the opening of the new high speed connection between France and Germany, allowing high speed travel between London and Budapest via Munich. Unfortunately the problem is that this network is very expensive to use and you have to change trains 2 times, once in Brussels (eurostar to ice), then in Munich (ice to railjet). Imho this should be solved to provide direct services across europe. (at last at the same levels as the TEE network provided many years ago)

 

Unfortunately DBAG is constantly cutting services that are not really profitable. This is how they got rid of the interregio network. The remaining parts are run by private train operating companies and some national railways (like MAV) who still care about providing minimal service levels on less profitable routes. The result might be that soon there will be no cheap (but slow) trains, just the very fast, but very expensive ones. The result is a move towards cheaper air travel.

 

ps: Last year, i've travelled from Budapest to Hamburg on one of the last long distance 'slow' trains. The whole route took more than 18 hours and since i showed up at the station's ticket booth just 30 minutes before departure (around 4 am), i had to ride in the baggage car on the Budapest to Hamburg direction. But it was much cheaper than taking the railjet and ice trains and the train allowed direct travel. The only reason this train is sill operating is that the high speed network between Berlin and Budapest via Prague is still under construction. Imho when the first part (Berlin-Prague) will be ready, the DBAG won't allow the MAV train to run. The same happened on the Venice route, where the Hungarian National Railways (MAV) wanted to keep the direct sleeper service, but the Italian Railways doesn't allow sleeper trains to enter Venice anymore. The only alternative route is the OBB high speed service through Wienna, which is a much longer route and takes almost the same time as the normal train through Croatia, but much more expensive. People have been switching to bus travel because of this. (there is no airport in Venice)

[Densha]

You exactly pointed out the problem.

 

Railway companies in Europe nowadays don't think about their passengers, but only about their money. That's the result of the European Union forcing countries to 'privatize' their railways.

'Privatize' because almost all public transport companies or one way or another still owned by a government. (for example: in the Netherlands you have Dutch, German and French operators that are all owned by the respective governments) This privatization also made the companies so that they only care about their money and don't give a damn about their passengers anymore.

 

To quote the current president of the Dutch railways: "Now and in the future you will have to stand in express trains during the rush hour." I'm really grateful to him that he is of the opinion that standing 3 hours on a train because the train is not long enough is fine, not. And this is every damn time the case in this country, even when it's not rush hour.

[Mudkip Orange]

Isn't it also the case that long-distance trains (like sleepers) don't qualify for subsidy, while "regional" trains do? IE if you serve all your non-high speed stops with a few Desiros running 150km legs during the day, that qualifies as a subsidy, but a couple of trains running 600km end to end don't?

[westfalen]

I think Densha has it right, today's privatised, or public corporations or whatever they are called if still government owned, see the profits as coming before the passengers.  Railway management these days never realise with their university degrees instead of railway operating experience that cutting costs to increase profits makes the service less desirable and turns away the passengers that bring in the revenue in the first place.

 

A few years back the Brisbane to Cunnamulla/Quilpie Westlander was on a schedule that left Brisbane Friday night, arrived at its destination Saturday morning and returned Sunday evening arriving back in Brisbane early Monday morning, as such it was well patronised by students and people working in Brisbane who wanted go back home for the weekend.  Then some accountant in an office decided it would save money if the train was turned back as soon as it arrived rather than laying over and changed it to out Thursday night and back Friday night and ever since if you need the fingers of both hands to count the passengers its a busy night and the train has been spiraling downwards towards eventual oblivion.

 

Queensland Rail is replacing the Brisbane-Cairns Sunlander sleeping car train with an 'upgraded' Tilt Train at the end of the year.  QR management boasts that the new train will offer accommodation equal to the airlines, we're a railway for goodness sake, we could and should be offering better than the airlines.

[Mudkip Orange]

A few years back the Brisbane to Cunnamulla/Quilpie Westlander ... was well patronised by students and people working in Brisbane ... [now] if you need the fingers of both hands to count the passengers its a busy night and the train has been spiraling downwards towards eventual oblivion.

 

Shouldn't this be obvious to anyone with an Excel sheet though? Should be a fairly simple matter to plot the average fare versus passenger under the current regime, average fare under the previous regime, additional lodging/etc cost to have the crew in Quilpie every weekend... I mean it's four powerpoint slides.

[kvp]

 

Shouldn't this be obvious to anyone with an Excel sheet though?

If a train isn't making a profit, then you can either look to increase the income or decrease the cost. If you can't increase the income in any realistic way (with more passengers or acceptable fare increases), then you decrease the cost. If this further decreases the income, you discontinue the service when it reaches a preset minimal number of customers. If you don't decrease the cost, then you will still loose money on the service, but can't discontinue it because too many people are using it. Sometimes chaning the timetable of a train is a way for the operator to make an unprofitable but otherwise packed train empty before discontinuing it without getting a public backlash. There is a certain level of political will required to force an operator to run a loss generating service at a schedule that is actually good for travellers. The presence of this political will results in the 'low quality but at least it works, mostly, if we are lucky' timetables seen in the UK. If they let operators get the level of profit that could be achived with totally free markets, we would see a larger service and route cut than the half finished Beeching axe.

 

 The same is true for the EU, where certain international and interregio routes are mandatory and each operator tries to pass as many of the unprofitable services to its neighbours or other private operators as they can. The problem is that high speed routes can legally replace conventional services, but that not only increases prices, but cuts off many smaller towns, with no or bus only relay service, which is somehow acceptable for the EU government. The result is an increase in high speed rail capacity with a decrease in both short and long distance conventional rail capacity. And once the planes are chaper and cover the same large cities only, people just use those, because they are not only cheaper but actually a bit faster.

[Sacto1985]

Interestingly, one place where overnight sleeper trains could survive is North America, of all places! Amtrak's long-distance sleeper trains west of the MIssissippi are fairly well-patronized (the Coast Starlight between Los Angeles and Seattle is quite popular) and VIA Rail's Canadian does fairly well (depending on the season).

 

I do agree that overnight trains in Europe are rapidly disappearing from a combination of more and more high-speed trains operating in Europe and competition from low-cost airlines like EasyJet and RyanAir.

[katoftw]

I sit on both side of the fence on this subject.  While I dont like services being reduced or removed.  I also dont see the point in running services that loose milions of dollars every year due to continuly reducing patronage numbers.

Edited September 21, 2014 by katoftw

[Densha]

A good example is a certain bus service in the city I lived in. Partially it ran parallel to a tram line so passengers could take either on that part of the route. The tram line ran a straight route though and the bus service also made some detours to outer parts of the city that otherwise wouldn't have public transport. At some point some local government decided that the bus line should be abolished in favour of the tram line. But because some neighbourhoods would be without public transport had that happened they protested and eventually the bus service was kept. Well, sort of. Because they halved the frequency from already a mere 30-minute frequency to once an hour, stopped running in the evening and on weekdays, and rerouted the service in such a weird way that if viewed from a map it looks like a spiral so if you want to get from the middle of the spiral to the station for example you have to do the whole 30-minute ride even though it could be just 5 minutes if the route was different.
 

The municipality expected 50% loss of passengers because of the halved frequency, but it led to 95% less passengers. They were that stupid to not realize that all other crazy changes would scare away all passengers. Now after two years it's still running like this and I can't remember seeing more than 2 people sitting in that bus ever since. Now that the line has become entirely useless they can just go ahead and abolish it entirely. Even though it was a quite busy service previously.

[westfalen]

Similar thing here in Ipswich, the local buses do a grand mystery tour around the suburbs to get to the centre of town so they could cut back the number of routes, with the result being you do a double take if you see a bus with a passenger in it.

[katoftw]

Similar thing here in Ipswich, the local buses do a grand mystery tour around the suburbs to get to the centre of town so they could cut back the number of routes, with the result being you do a double take if you see a bus with a passenger in it.

Thanks to Translink's 400m rule.  The whole of SEQ is the same with the buses.  Strathpine area is also doosie too.

[westfalen]

Thanks to Translink's 400m rule.  The whole of SEQ is the same with the buses.  Strathpine area is also doosie too.

Speaking from the railway side of things Translink would have to be one of the worst things to happen to public transport in Queensland.

[westfalen]

Back to the original subject here are the photos I took at Vienna Westbahnhoff when I caught the Orient Express from there to Strasbourg on 24/06/08.  The through cars for Amsterdam on the rear make the train look impressive but there were only three of four cars on arrival at Strasbourg the next morning.  I try not to be negative but the sleeper compartment in the last photo was a double berth compartment that I paid two berth fees, something like 260 Euros if I recall correctly, to get the whole compartment to myself which I'm glad I did because to this day I can't see how two people could possibly fit in there.

 

Edited September 22, 2014 by westfalen

[Densha]

That's not the Orient Express, this is :

 

[westfalen]

Yeah, the sleeper I travelled in was operated by some upstart company called Wagons-Lits. :)

 

Saw the other one too, the previous day in Innsbruck, but not being a millionaire or TV travel show host a look was all I could afford.

 

 

[bikkuri bahn]

Rode the Orient Express from Paris East Station to Wien Westbahnhof, the summer before it was cut back.  I remember most of the train was made up of deadhead stock (corail?) that was dropped off somewhere before the border.  The sleeper/couchettes were on the front of the train.  No aircon, so we left the windows open as we passed through the eastern French countryside. Sunset at Strasbourg, I saw the cathedral silhouetted against the sky as the train slowly wound around the city and made for the frontier crossing. Nice memories.

[westfalen]

That sounds better than my trip from Strasbourg to Paris on a crowded TGV, was stuck in Strasbourg for four hours before there was a train with a vacant seat.  Rode most of the Strasburg tram system while I was waiting but had to settle for a quick snapshot of the Eiffel Tower before I carried on to Lyon.