Night trains have the potential to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions by 3%.

According to opinion polls, 7 out of 10 Europeans would be willing to take the night train instead of the plane if the offer seemed reasonable to them. Back-on-Track, a European network of night train initiatives, has used this as a basis to examine air passenger numbers in the EU in 2019 to see which air connections could be replaced by night train connections. Distances up to 1500 km as well as distances up to 3000 km were considered with different scenarios. Overall, up to 32 % of passengers could switch to night trains if there were an attractive offer. This would reduce emissions from air traffic by 26 %. In order to create such an offer, up to 2500 more night trains would be required, as well as a considerable improvement in the framework conditions, in particular a reduction in track access charges.