Night trains, displaced from the "landscape" by low-cost air carriers and high-speed trains, are actively returning to the railways of Western Europe.
Experts explain this primarily by searching for environmental alternatives to aviation transport, which accounts for the largest amount of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
Today, the Austrian national railway company ÖBB, which has connected Vienna with Brussels and Berlin by night trains, is most active in putting them on the rails. The company has already spent 500 million euros to buy 20 trains of this modification.
"In the coming years, we want to focus on building a mainline network for night trains," said Austrian environment Minister Leonore Gewessler. According to her, Vienna is now served by more night trains than any other city in Europe.
In turn, the Swedish government has just allocated 39 million euros for the resumption of daily circulation of night trains on the routes Stockholm-Hamburg and Malmo-Brussels by the summer of 2022.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron said on July 14 that he plans to ensure massive return of night trains to the country's railways. For his part, French transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari has already announced the revival of night trains on the Paris-nice and Paris-Tarbes lines by 2022.
