18.06.2026
Leading European rail experts recommended on May 19 Decisive action at a conference in Tallinn: the demand for train traffic is already real, but the supply is unacceptably sluggish.
Rail Baltic Estonia mobility conference "The economy is getting derailed" panel discussion "What is the global impact of mobility?" ended with a challenge that sounded in the hall like something between a provocation and an alarm clock: why is Estonia waiting for the completion of Rail Baltica when a night train connection between Vilnius or Kaunas and Tallinn can be opened in a year on the existing railway?
The co-founder and CEO of the Dutch-Belgian night train operator European Sleeper spoke. Elmer van Buuren, representative of the railway cooperation of the seven northern regions of Sweden Henric Fuchs and head of the East Railway project for the eastern railway connection in Finland Petteri's Portaankorva.
Where there is supply, there must be demand
Van Buuren has built Europe's most successful independent night train network over the past three years.
“Today, if I want to travel to the Baltics from Central Europe, I can take a train from Warsaw to Vilnius – and then I have to spend the night in Vilnius if I want to travel on to Riga. That doesn’t make sense,” said Van Buuren. “If you create one round-trip route from Riga to Kaunas, the travel time to and from Latvia will be reduced by sixteen hours. Then the time to get from Berlin, Prague or Vienna to Riga will be around eighteen hours – and people will start doing it.”
Van Buuren cited his company's experience: European Sleeper trains from Brussels to Berlin and Prague are full, and the Paris-Berlin route, which opened in March 2026, has had an average of three hundred and fifty passengers per train since the beginning.
“We see from the European Sleeper experience that people come from London to Brussels by Eurostar and then take our train to Prague – twenty hours in total. It’s real, it’s tangible,” he stressed, emphasizing the need to open night train services and the passenger demand for them in the Baltics. “Don’t wait for Rail Baltica, open night train services today!”
But Van Buuren’s main message was not self-praise. He pointed a finger at the politicians and train operators in the Baltic states. “The Vilnius-Riga train is always full. When there is supply, there will be demand. But you have to start. And that requires vision and a willingness to cooperate, especially with Latvia.”
Photo: Karli Saul / Rail Baltic Estonia
The Swedish experience: the train changed residential choices
Fuchs, who represents seven regions in northern Sweden, which together account for seven percent of the European Union's area, emphasized the far-reaching impact of railway investments on society.
“Over ninety percent of the European Union’s iron ore comes from northern Sweden. If it can’t be transported safely, production across Europe will come to a standstill,” he explained, describing how in September 2025, torrential rains knocked out two of the region’s three railway lines for eight days. “On a normal day, there are a hundred trains running from north to south. Four trains got through in those eight days. The impact was clearly felt in Sweden’s GDP.”
He gave a vivid example of the opening of the Botnia Line, which took place about fifteen years ago: “Umeå used to take an hour and a half to get to Örnsköldsvik, but now it takes fifty minutes after the new line was opened. Suddenly, people could live in one city and work in another. In small places around railway stations, real estate prices started to rise, families moved there, where they could buy an apartment for a third of the price compared to Umeå, and commute to work in the city.
Finnish example: the city changes before the railway is completed
Portaankorva gave an example of regional development from Finland: Porvoo – the largest city in Finland without a railway so far – will get a Helsinki-Vantaa connection when East Railway opens, which is faster than the journey from the Vantaa region to the city centre of Helsinki. “It takes twenty minutes to travel from the airport to Porvoo, thirty minutes from the city centre to the airport at the moment,” he explained. East Railway estimates that the new connection will result in around 1,8 million commuter trips per year between Porvoo and the Helsinki region. But it is noteworthy that although the connection will not be completed this decade, the city is discussing land use and development plans for the next twenty years. “We are not building this railway for the next ten years, but for a hundred to two hundred years,” said Portaankorva.
The night train was never unpopular – it just disappeared
Van Buuren debunked the myth that the night train is a relic of the past that has been given a second life thanks to climate change.
"The night train was never unpopular. The reason it declined was because Deutsche Bahn and other major operators decided to stop. It was an economic decision – Deutsche Bahn chose to invest in high-speed trains, but the demand was always there."
European Sleeper itself has proven the opposite: the crowdfunded company carried over two hundred and thirty thousand passengers on more than seven hundred trips in two years without major corporate backers.
"The night train is the most economically difficult model - you can only use the rolling stock once a day, not make three round trips like with a high-speed train. That's why it was difficult. But not because people didn't want to or didn't want to travel," van Buuren emphasized.
Underestimating demand: linear thinking is to blame
Decision-makers have repeatedly underestimated people's willingness to choose the train. Fuchs cited two main reasons: linear thinking and too many economists.
He explained that the Swedish authorities' passenger forecasts have always been too conservative, with mistakes always being made in underestimating the number of passengers. At the same time, the number of commuters by train has exceeded pre-pandemic levels.
Portaankorva added from a Finnish perspective that forecasts fail to capture the impact of passenger experience and comfort: “The customer must be number one. The travel journey – the ship from Helsinki to Tallinn, then on with Rail Baltica – must be smooth and pleasant. It’s not just a question of the railway.”
Investors come when the narrative is clear
On the issue of financing, all three panelists were unanimous: you don't need a magic formula to attract private capital, but a believable narrative.
“The three questions every investor asks: Do you know what you’re doing? Can you do it for the next X years? And do you know how to sell tickets?” Van Buuren concluded. “If you don’t have the answers to these questions, private equity won’t come.”
Fuchs gave a cautionary example from the Swedish experience: “There is a project in Sweden that once cost ten million euros, now costs one hundred million euros. This must be remembered when talking about postponing investment. Someone told us: there will never be a better day to invest than today.”
Background
Elmer van Buuren is a Dutch entrepreneur and rail activist who is the co-founder and CEO of the railway company European Sleeper. He is known for his role in reviving night trains in Europe, including contributing to the creation of a direct line between Brussels and Prague.
Henric Fuchs is an experienced infrastructure and public transport expert, currently serving as CEO of the Bothnian Corridor. As a passionate rail passenger, he is committed to creating a seamless and efficient rail network that connects Northern Scandinavia to the rest of the world. In Sweden, as well as elsewhere in Europe, he is known as a champion of multi-purpose infrastructure, sustainable logistics and large-scale rail investments.
Petteri Portaankorva represents the development company Itärata Oy (East Railway), which is planning a new high-speed rail connection between Helsinki Airport, Porvoo and Kouvola. He has extensive experience in the transport, logistics and infrastructure sectors, having served as both a service customer and a service provider.
The article was first published on May 21, 2026 as a content marketing story in Õhtuleht.
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