A new petition has been submitted calling for the restoration of funding for new night train services in Switzerland. The text argued that by scrapping or shelving new night connections between Swiss cities and European destinations, the government was acting against its own climate targets.
On December 18, the Green Party of Switzerland and actif-trafiC association submitted a text to the parliament in Bern, calling for the restoration of all planned night rail services. More than 58.000 Swiss citizens signed the petition.
In recent decades, there has been a consistent decline in the number of night train services to and from Switzerland. Routes such as Zurich-Brussels (2003), Zurich-Rome (2009), Zurich-Barcelona (2012), Basel-Moscow (2013) and Basel-Copenhagen (2014) have all been consigned to the history books.
However, the last few years have seen a revival in demand for night trains, which are now seen as a greener, more relaxing way to travel across Europe. In Switzerland, this culminated in the launch of the new night rail service between Zurich and Amsterdam in 2021.
Thanks to 30 million francs in funding provided by the Swiss government, approved as part of the country’s revised 2023 CO2 Law, new services were also set to be created between Zurich, Rome and Barcelona in 2025. However, this plan was short-lived.
Despite hopes of a new night train revolution, in September the Federal Department of Transport confirmed that the new services would be scrapped as part of wide-ranging austerity measures. This meant that, even though Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) was less than a year from launching the new public transport services, there was no longer enough money to fund the new routes.
The experts who initially proposed the budget cuts argued that the night trains would be too heavily reliant on federal funds to be financially sustainable. For instance, ÖBB and its brand Nightjet, the main night train operator between Switzerland and Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna and Amsterdam among others, barely makes a profit - and is only able to do so via generous subsidies from the Austrian government.
In response, speaking at a press conference, a group of Green Party politicians argued that night trains play "a key role in the ecological transition, offering a sustainable alternative to short-haul flights." On its website, actif-trafiC claimed that night trains could be made significantly cheaper by renegotiating rail access prices with Germany and France, and having trains be subject to the same lower value-added tax as flights and hotel stays.
In the statement, the Green Party argued that by cutting the funding, the Federal Council was u-turning on its own climate law. “We will not tolerate this backtracking! The climate crisis is here and now. We must act. That is why the rule is: train instead of flight! But that will only work if international rail connections are expanded.”
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