With a single 1970s train in orange livery and a little crowdfunding help, a plucky Berlin start-up is challenging the might of Germany’s state rail operator, Deutsche Bahn.
At 6:20am yesterday, the first Locomore train was to leave Stuttgart in Germany’s southwest, pass through Frankfurt and Hannover and pull into Berlin, its final destination, about six-and-a-half hours later.
With just one return service per day to start with — compared with more than 700 daily long-distance journeys run by Deutsche Bahn — Locomore founder and director Derek Ladewig knows he barely qualifies as a rival.
Photo: AFP
However, he is hoping to win over Deutsche Bahn customers with budget ticket prices and lure environmentally conscious travelers from more polluting forms of transport.
“We are offering a new service to compete with the car, the plane, the long-distance bus, as well as Deutsche Bahn,” Ladewig told reporters.
Locomore, which bills itself as the world’s first crowdfunded train line, owes its start-up capital entirely to online supporters who chipped in more than 600,000 euros (US$640,000) in less than a year to get the project on the rails.
Many of the contributors bought vouchers that can now be traded for tickets, as well as souvenirs such as mugs and T-shirts in the firm’s distinctive orange hue — a nod to the vintage origins of Locomore’s renovated carriages from the 1970s.
The 600km trip from Stuttgart to Berlin takes slightly longer than with Deutsche Bahn, but Locomore hopes to make up for that by promising its ticket prices will always be cheaper than those of its competitor.
By comparison, Locomore charges 22 euros for a Stuttgart-Berlin ride in January, compared with 115.9 euros on Deutsche Bahn — although the latter’s journey is roughly an hour shorter and it offers prices as low as 29 euros for travelers willing to change trains once or twice.
Karl-Peter Naumann, a spokesman for passenger group Pro Bahn, welcomed the new player on the block and said the service should prove popular with families, who will be offered their own compartments, and with young people.
The country’s rail sector was liberalized in 1994, but remains dominated by Deutsche Bahn, which carries more than 5.5 million passengers a day in Germany alone and accounts for 99 percent of all long-distance rail journeys.
The state company has more competitors on the regional transport networks, where its market share falls to 72 percent, according to Mathias Lahrmann of the BSL transportation consulting agency.
Locomore is not the first private company to try to go up against the rail operator, but those efforts have gained little traction.
Veolia Verkehr, a subsidiary of France’s Transdev, abandoned its loss-making Interconnex service in 2014, leaving just the Hamburg-Cologne express (HKX), launched in 2012, to offer an alternative.
“Locomore could invigorate the market with its innovative ideas,” Lahrmann said.
However, “like HKX, it only serves a niche market,” he added.
Lahrmann said it was difficult for new companies to get a foot in the door in the long-distance rail business.
There are no state subsidies available and prospective operators are expected to reserve their slots years in advance, as well as source their own trains.
To give itself maximum flexibility, Locomore has opted to rent its trains and drivers from other companies, while employing its own onboard personnel and staff handling ticket sales.
Ladewig has calculated that at least half of Locomore’s seats need to be filled to cover costs and be able to branch out to other lines in the future.
Achieving that will be no mean feat, as even Deutsche Bahn last year registered an occupancy rate of just 50.9 percent on its long-distance trains.
“It’s not easy to be profitable, but it’s possible,” Lahrmann said.
With more than 10,000 tickets already sold and its trains promising to be “pretty full” over the coming weekends, Locomore’s Ladewig is banking on the upcoming Christmas holidays to keep his ambitious plans on track.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of