A quick thread about night trains

The transport ministers from 🇩🇪🇦🇹🇫🇷🇨🇭, and the CEOs of the state-owned 🚅 operators in each (DB, ÖBB, SNCF, SBB), held a press conference about night trains today...

This slide summarises what they'd agreed

Don't get me wrong: night trains are *good*, and the trains on these routes will be ÖBB NightJet services, and ÖBB runs the best night trains there are in Europe.

I personally will be very happy to take these trains.
But so much for the good news.

Most of these routes have *already* been announced (Zürich to BCN, Rome, Amsterdam) - see https://t.co/7JnAo74tIX

Or have been even trialled (Vienna-Brussels) - see https://t.co/kYCambVXph
That means only really the parts of the trains going to Paris and Berlin are in some way new - and even then we don't know how this will work (old Berlin-Paris night train went *through* Brussels)

In short: we're talking today about something like 4-6 new train services a day
In comparison: DB has 400 ICE units, SNCF 600 TGVs.

All of this is a *drop in the ocean*.
One of the headaches with ÖBB's NightJet trains to date has been combining tickets for them with tickets for other providers (even with those at this press conference!)

Was there word on how to solve that? No, of course not
Also bunging money at state railways is only one way to solve this - actually achieving genuine competition in EU-wide rail would be another.

ÖBB CEO Matthä talked of fair competition - but only with other transport modes.
And there was of course one notable absentee at today's event: the politician actually supposedly responsible for all of this - @AdinaValean, the European Commissioner for Transport.
So today was a tiny, tiny step forward.

The press will no doubt lap it up, because everyone likes a shiny new train.

But in reality if we're to get more Europeans out of planes and onto long distance trains, we need a LOT more and a LOT better than this!

/ends

More from Jon Worth

To those saying that those who have got their public health advice wrong earlier in the pandemic should put up their hands and apologise... a little cautionary lesson from another sector

A short 🧵

1/

Public health is not my thing

But Brexit is

And throughout 2019 and 2020 I have been trying to make predictions as to what will happen in that story. Lives do not depend on this, only my professional reputation (marginally) does

2/12

The three series of #BrexitDiagram I made in 2019 were extraordinarily accurate

Series 1/2
https://t.co/wOSzIXxJ2M

Series 3
https://t.co/E4fKeGoa5n

Series 4
https://t.co/yRsQ8mLGj1

Each series got that stage of Brexit right

3/12

The 2020 series was nowhere near as good - at one stage I had No Deal Brexit at 78% chance in early December - and that was not what

I own this error - I was wrong

I know *why* I was wrong - I thought the European Parliament would fight more on Provisional Application, and I thought agreeing everything in a week wouldn't work. I wasn't right

The Manston crisis / borders closing changed something too

5/12
OK, it can be avoided no more.

This is perhaps the most complex 🧵 on #Brexit I've ever attempted. But this issue really matters.

Business, possibly even lives, depend on getting this stuff right.

It is about the complexity of Brexit delay, and what to do about it.

1/25

If negotiations had gone to plan, it would have worked thus:

1️⃣ 🇬🇧&🇪🇺 agree a Deal, politically
2️⃣ That is then turned into a legally ratifiable text
3️⃣ Both sides then ratify - on 🇪🇺 side Member States and the EP, 🇬🇧 side the Houses of Parliament
4️⃣ Deal in force 1.1.2021

2/25

The problem: we do not have 1️⃣ yet.

And with just over 16 days to go - including 🌲 - we do not have time for 2️⃣ and 3️⃣ and hence no 4️⃣.

We *might* have time for 2️⃣ - and that could prove to be significant (see tweet 7 below), but definitely not 3️⃣ on 🇪🇺 side.

3/25

*Essential* problem: by having spent so long talking (I think 🇬🇧 tactic has been to run down the clock -
https://t.co/8EJZAJZHqz ) the path to a normal ratification is now ⛔️.

Now ratification becomes harder - legally, politically, practically - with every passing hour.

4/25

The most obvious stumbling block is...

🥁🥁🥁

... the European Parliament!

Parliamentary sovereignty, eh? A topic for another time.

Anyway, the EP has said it will not vote on a Brexit Deal this

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