58,000 people sign petition for night trains
Keystone-SDA
The Green Party and the environmental organisation Umverkehr have submitted a petition in Bern with 58,640 signatures for night trains. It demands that the government expand the services in this area, as provided for in the CO2 Act.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The signatures were collected in less than three months, according to a press release on Wednesday. “This is a strong signal that the government should not abandon the expansion of night trains,” said Aline Trede, parliamentary group leader of the Greens.
+ Swiss night trains: past, present and future
The aim is to promote sustainable mobility and offer alternatives to air travel. The environmental organisation demands that the federal government’s cost-cutting measures should not have any impact on night trains.
The night train projects from Switzerland to Barcelona and Rome are endangered by the government’s cost-cutting measures. On Monday, the House of Representatives agreed with the decision of the cantons and decided to subsidise the night trains with CHF10 million ($11.2 million) a year instead of the originally planned CHF30 million.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
