FRANCE: Start-up Midnight Trains has abandoned its ambitious plan to develop a network of premium overnight trains offering hotel-standard accommodation on European routes of up to 1 500 km from Paris, after being unable to raise the necessary funding.
Co-founder Adrien Aumont said the rail sector’s approach to competition is too focused on incumbent operators, and not on newcomers and start-ups. He said a key problem for night trains is that infrastructure managers do not take a pan-European view.
Midnight Trains was established by Aumont and Romain Payet, who previously set up crowdfunding company KissKissBankBank. It announced its initial plans June 2021, including a proposal for a Paris – Edinburgh service.
In March 2022 it notified French regulator ART of its aim to launch daily return services from Paris to Barcelona, Nice, Milano and Venezia.
Aumont was hoping to attract 2 million passengers/year. He said existing overnight services are poorly marketed and it is difficult for potential passengers to understand what is on offer.
He believed that if overnight trains were to compete with air, they needed to be redesigned to meet the expectations of 21st century passengers, including privacy as sharing overnight accommodation with strangers was no longer deemed acceptable.
He envisaged various types of cabin, with high-quality bedding and good sound insulation to ensure that passengers could sleep for 6 h to 7 h. A restaurant and bar car would be included in the trains.
Yet on May 31 the company announced that it was dropping its plans after failing to obtain the funding needed to lease suitable rolling stock to launch its first Paris – Milano – Venezia service.
An initial €1·1m had been raised, and the project had also been awarded non-financial support under the European Commission’s programme for new or improved cross-border passenger services. However, the second funding round failed to raise the €5m needed.
While Midnight Trains failed, Aumont said he was willing to assist others who might be interested in launching a ‘21st century night train.’
The AllRail association of new entrants to the rail market said Midnight Trains’ announcement was ’another stark reminder that the EU passenger rail market remains much more open in legislation than it is in reality’.
AllRail Policy Officer Salim Benkirane said ‘the fact that Midnight Trains’ project was among the cross-border pilots that the European Commission selected should serve as a wake-up call for the new EU parliament and Commission. How many promising passenger rail start-ups must be sacrificed before action is taken to achieve a genuine Single European Railway Area?’
