Sad news confirm Deutsche Bahn is closing down the night connection bewtween Paris and Berlin.
I have tried myself night trains a few times already. My first experience happened back in 2010, during an interrail where I took a reaaaaally long journey from Prague to Düsseldorf, with a few hours stop at Berlin in the middle of the night (not a very straight line).The first reason to do so was budget, and I happily discovered that the experience was much better than I thought it would be. Then, past two summers I have simply preferred to take a bunk in the night train that makes it form Madrid to Lisbon. With similar prizes, it was just worthy for me to enjoy my way to the destination and be able to bring whatever I wanted with me, even if it takes 9 hours instead of 1 (plus whatever it is on the airport).
More recently, I have just watched the movie Before sunrise and the romantic and authentic experience of a night train trip has joinned to my perspective. Taking all that into account I truly believe we should do more to try to save night trains.
As far as my engineering studies take me, train transportation is the cheapest and one of the safest options you can take, but also the most ignored when considering different possibilities. If companies say they are not profitable enough, eventhough I generally believe in numbers, maybe their approach is not the right one. What about combining the transportation of people and goods for instance? If we just compare trains and buses, I don’t know why a night train which basically takes the same time than a bus to reach its destination, is even more comfortable, can take more people and is less fuel consuming and polluting, actually costs more. Bus companies have performed an awesome play offering an incredibly low-cost alternative and highlighting the Wi-Fi as its unique selling point. Together with a good PR strategy they are no longer an option in danger to disappear in the following years. Something similar should be done with trains, we shouldn’t just resign to loose such a great alternative.
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