Put the night trains back on track for climate-friendly transports
The climate challenge of this century encourages to rethink our mobility. Planes and individual cars, very energy-consuming, are used for a great portion of very-long-distance travels (more than 750 km). In order to progress towards modal shift to more ecological modes, massive investments for rail have been made since the 2000’s. They have been mostly concentrated on High-Speed-Lines (LGV, in French) projects. But in spite of these huge investments, these projects did not reduce of the emissions of aviation, which keep growing in France. What’s more, it is becoming very complicated to finance the expansion of the LGV network, as the most relevant lines – between metropolises separated by 400 to 750 km – have already been built. And nowadays passengers tend to prefer cheaper tickets to faster journeys. Besides, an other rail solution for very long distances, the InterCity Night train (ICN) sees its dismantling accelerated in 2016-2017. As for the classical railway network and the daytime Intercity trains (ICJ for “InterCités de Jour”), they have suffered underinvestment during all these years. Neglected for the last decades, the ICN offer now has problems of visibility, unattractive timetables, and too frequent delays and cancellations: it seems that its use has been – willingly or not – discouraged. SNCF and the French State have kept repeating contradictory justifications around the “alleged deficit” and “empty” night trains, but they have high occupancy rates. The ICN has in fact quite many advantages
via https://back-on-track.eu/put-the-night-trains-back-on-track-for-climate-friendly-transports/