I ask you as representatives of the owner of Deutsche Bahn - the German citizens - to act now to prevent withdrawal of DB's night and motorail trains.

Why is this important?

Deutsche Bahn AG wants to discontinue all overnight and motorail trains with sleeping, couchette and seated cars by the end of 2016, at the latest. They will be replaced by seats-only ICE or IC trains and buses travelling overnight without any suitable sleeping accommodation.

This would mean an unacceptable cutback of service and a gap in the European transport offer:

By taking overnight sleeper trains for journeys such as Hamburg-Zurich or Amsterdam-Munich, people gain the day for work or leisure, making low-carbon train travel a practical and time-effective alternative to flying. On longer routes like Copenhagen-Lyon or Berlin-Rome, sleeper trains save passengers from having to stop and spend the night in a hotel.

If sleeper and motorail trains are discontinued, more traffic will hit the roads and there would be more short-haul flights, in direct opposition to the obligations of the Paris Climate Summit of 2015 and the self-declared climate protection goals of Deutsche Bahn AG.