Wake up MEPs: Protesters don night caps to attract attention to night train cuts
Demonstrators in their pyjamas arrived in Geneva at 7am on Friday (19 June 2015) to protest against cuts to European night trains.
They want the European Union to create a better environment for cross-border trains to operate so they can compete with polluting cheap airlines.
Over the weekend other campaigners staged protests in Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Dortmund, Copenhagen, Odense, Basel and Hamburg.
The demonstrations culminated in Berne on Sunday with a late-night pyjama party with protesters bringing camp beds.
The protesters are angry that MEPs and European bureaucrats have failed to protect one of the most efficient, environmentally sustainable and convenient ways of travelling while helping energy-wasteful airlines with fuel subsidies.
Campaign group Back on Track is calling for more investment in a rail network to provide efficient, accessible, cross-border traffic.
Rail operators blame the rise of low-budget airlines for a fall-off in the demand for sleeper trains, while campaigners say the companies have failed to invest in the night services to offer an attractive alternative to flying. Benefits such as restaurant cars have been cut.
Night-time services cancelled last year included those running from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, Basel to Copenhagen, and Paris to Berlin.
Campaigners on the European mainland say companies should follow the example of Britain’s London-Scotland Caledonian service and the London-Penzance Night Riviera sleeper services.
Chinese and Russian rail operators have also invested heavily in their night train services.
Campaigners say politicians should scrap the VAT on international rail ticket sales. Airline passengers do not pay VAT on tickets. This is clear discrimination against the most environmentally friendly form of transport.
“This is the ticket to my daughter’s future,” said Bernhard Knierim of Bahn für Alle. “I am fighting to save night trains.
“The politicians’ ideology is that all train companies should be in competition with each other, so none of them are incentivised to work together,” he said.
“And within the companies themselves, night trains are seen as a niche market, rather than part of the whole integrated rail network.”
Joachim Holstein, 53, who has worked as a night train conductor for the German state railway Deutsche Bahn for 20 years, blamed a lack of joined-up thinking between the various state railway companies for the night train’s demise.
“It is astonishing that it was easier to travel in eastern and western Europe 40 years ago, despite the cold war, with all the visas and border controls involved, than it is today, with Schengen, and the lack of visas required,” he said.
“You used to be able to undertake train journeys of 2,000 kilometres without changing trains, from Munich to Athens, Warsaw to Brussels, Copenhagen to Paris. Now that is impossible and it is getting ever more difficult to cross Europe by train, which seems so contrary to what Europe stands for.”
On his regular routes from Hamburg to Zurich and Munich, Holstein said he encountered passengers for whom flying was out of the question.
“Some are scared to fly, others have health conditions and many just find it far more relaxing to get on a train in the centre of a city in the evening, and arrive refreshed at their destination the following day.”
Holstein, a campaigner with Back on Track, said the loss of night trains would be most keenly felt in the summer of 2020 when the Uefa European football championship will be held in 13 European cities.
“Night trains would be the most efficient, environmentally friendly way to transport the fans from Bilbao to Budapest, but that just is not possible today,” he said.
Back on Track
Railways for All
Guardian