A Dutch start-up called GoVolta has announced €10 overnight tickets between Amsterdam and Berlin, with plans to extend services to Prague, Zurich and Barcelona. Its founders claim that rail can undercut budget airlines on price whilst offering lower emissions and a calmer way to travel.
The idea arrives at a moment Brussels wants more people on tracks and fewer in the air. The European Commission reports that rail accounts for just over 8 per cent of land passenger transport but only 0.3 per cent of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions, far less than aviation.
Against that backdrop, night trains look like an elegant climate fix. Yet scaling up fast enough to matter remains the challenge.
A Promising Yet Narrow Revolution
New entrants like GoVolta, as well as established operators in Austria and France, show that demand exists.
Night trains from Vienna to Paris or Zurich now sell out regularly, and surveys suggest younger travellers are more willing to swap short-haul flights for slower journeys if the price is right.
Yet cheap headline fares often hide tight capacity. A single sleeper service might carry a few hundred passengers, whereas low-cost airlines move tens of thousands between major cities each week.
On many routes, high track access charges and fragmented national regulations still push up rail costs, making consistent €10 tickets more marketing hook than standard offer. Infrastructure poses another limit.
Much of Europe’s rail network remains focused on daytime intercity and commuter traffic. Overnight paths compete with freight trains, and cross-border signalling systems can still cause delays. Upgrading lines to handle more services requires billions in public investment and years of planning, commitments few governments have fully made.
Trains, Planes and Real Choices
The appeal of flight is not only price. For many workers, time is the scarce resource. A two-hour plane trip between northern and southern Europe can save a day compared with rail, especially with poor connections.
Until timetables become more coherent, expectations that trains will simply replace planes risk sounding like wishful thinking. At the same time, treating air and rail as enemies rather than parts of a wider system misses the point.
Climate researchers argue that aviation should be reduced where alternatives exist, particularly on routes under 1,000 kilometres, whilst heavy investment flows into rail and cross-border services. Night trains can excel in that middle distance, linking cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen and Prague in a way that is competitive for overnight journeys and attractive to tourists.
A Wider Mediterranean Question
For travellers moving between Europe and the southern Mediterranean, trains alone cannot replace planes. Geography and politics limit rail connections beyond a handful of ferries and regional lines in Morocco and Tunisia.
In these cases, the more realistic goal is to cut unnecessary intra-European flights so that limited aviation capacity serves routes with no alternative. Some North African cities already see tourists arrive with a different mindset, staying longer and combining fewer trips rather than flying often for short weekends.
If affordable trains make it easier to traverse Europe without boarding a plane, they could indirectly reduce the pressure for frequent flights to holiday hubs around the Mediterranean.
From Experiment to Policy
Low-cost rail start-ups are useful experiments, but they cannot transform the system alone. The European Commission’s latest rail market report stresses that reaching climate targets will require coordinated timetables, simpler booking platforms and sustained investment in cross-border infrastructure.
If policymakers treat projects like GoVolta as proof that the market will sort things out, progress will stall. If instead these efforts are matched by public funding, fair access rules and support for night-train rolling stock, they could signal the beginning of a genuine shift.
Europe will not wake up one morning to find that trains have replaced planes. What can happen, step by step, is that the most unnecessary flights give way to rail on routes that are already competitive.
Cheap night tickets are more than a clever promotion. They test how seriously Europe takes building a transport system in which the cleaner choice is also the easiest one.
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