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Having lived in several European countries, I would say that ÖBB offers some of the best services anywhere in Europe. In addition to those night services, they

Having lived in several European countries, I would say that ÖBB offers some of the best services anywhere in Europe. In addition to those night services, they are also frontrunners in other highly innovative lines of business, for example train services that allow you to take a bike or a car to solve last-mile mobility problems etc. That said: ÖBB gets € 700 million per year in subsidies from the Austrian taxpayer in addition to loans guaranteed by the taxpayer etc [1] some politicians use the number € 4.7 billion per year if you some up all the different modes of wealth-transfer (although that number is contested [2]). To put this in context for a very small country: It's a similar order of magnitude as all of the taxpayer-funded science funding in Austria [3] [1] https://konzern.oebb.at/de/ueber-den-konzern/fakten/subventionen https://konzern.oebb.at/de/ueber-den-konzern/fakten/subventi... [2] https://konzern.oebb.at/de/ueber-den-konzern/fakten/steuergelder https://konzern.oebb.at/de/ueber-den-konzern/fakten/steuerge... [3] https://investinaustria.at/de/forschung-entwicklung/forschungsfoerderungen.php https://investinaustria.at/de/forschung-entwicklung/forschun...

izacus 7y ago
Yep... unfortunately their tickets tend to be pretty expensive. A sleeper bed in a 3-bed compartment is between 110-140EUR one-way for the itinerary I usually travel. In comparison, I usually manage to get return airline tickets for about 150-200EUR for the same destination, which makes the train a very expensive option :/
- holri 7y ago
  Airlines do not pay tax for their energy used. ÖBB does.
- modernerd 7y ago
  For trips within Austria, you can save up to 50% with a Vorteilscard (66€/year): https://www.oebb.at/en/tickets-kundenkarten/kundenkarten/vorteilscard.html https://www.oebb.at/en/tickets-kundenkarten/kundenkarten/vor... I bought the card last year and it's paid for itself with just a few trips into Vienna and back (I'm in Tirol).
  - stakhanov 7y ago
    True: The customer loyalty card is a very common screw-over (ahem price differentiation tactic) to make tourists pay more than domestic/regular customers. It's done by most railway companies in most countries though.
zwischenzug 7y ago
My mother's Austrian and I lived in Austria for a year, teaching English. On one day (and only on one day over the whole year) the train was late (by 20 minutes). The sense of uproar among the passengers was palpable.

izacus 7y ago

Yep... unfortunately their tickets tend to be pretty expensive. A sleeper bed in a 3-bed compartment is between 110-140EUR one-way for the itinerary I usually travel. In comparison, I usually manage to get return airline tickets for about 150-200EUR for the same destination, which makes the train a very expensive option :/

holri 7y ago
Airlines do not pay tax for their energy used. ÖBB does.
modernerd 7y ago
For trips within Austria, you can save up to 50% with a Vorteilscard (66€/year): https://www.oebb.at/en/tickets-kundenkarten/kundenkarten/vorteilscard.html https://www.oebb.at/en/tickets-kundenkarten/kundenkarten/vor... I bought the card last year and it's paid for itself with just a few trips into Vienna and back (I'm in Tirol).
- stakhanov 7y ago
  True: The customer loyalty card is a very common screw-over (ahem price differentiation tactic) to make tourists pay more than domestic/regular customers. It's done by most railway companies in most countries though.

zwischenzug 7y ago

My mother's Austrian and I lived in Austria for a year, teaching English. On one day (and only on one day over the whole year) the train was late (by 20 minutes). The sense of uproar among the passengers was palpable.