More choices for night trains.....

A little more detail here:
https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/main-line/obb-db-sbb-and-sncf-announce-nightjet-collaboration/

It was not much new announced but it was nice to see the routes confirmed.

For those who want a quick summary:

• December 2021: Vienna - Munich - Paris and Zürich - Cologne - Amsterdam
• December 2023: Vienna - Brussels, Vienna - Paris, Paris - Berlin and Berlin - Brussels
• December 2024: Zürich - Barcelona.

Meanwhile, in the US, public transit is facing a death spiral. That includes the nation's capital region, where I live. I don't see any light at the end of this tunnel. If there is no political support in Congress for emergency funding, the writing is on the wall.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/nyregion/mass-transit-service-cuts-covid.html

I wonder where public transit will suffer most in Europe when this is all over. I'm sure they will have funding challenges as well, but at least they have the political support that we (in the US) can't seem to get together.

not everywhere, Agnes. I was just reading yesterday how snuck in to our Chancellor's autumn budget review was a cut in the funding of railways from £10.4bn to £9.4bn. That's a whole billion of Pounds out the window without a bye your leave.

Let's hope that ÖBB remains the leader. In the years when SNCF and the French government were writing reports to justify eliminating the few remaining French domestic night trains, ÖBB was busy planning, taking the risk of acquiring rolling stock, experimenting with routes, beefing up on-board service, and building a modern online sales platform. (This year, the entire range of Nightjet sleeping car accommodations and upgrades became available for direct purchase on the ÖBB Web site and within the ÖBB app.)

As soon as SNCF gets the upper hand in a partnership, you get aggressive yield management, which, while potentially good for revenue (though I have seen plenty of empty seats on specific segments of the France/Germany high-speed train services over the years), can be terrible for the traveler (wide swings in fares; seats sold out far in advance; need for hidden-city ticketing; circus atmosphere in first class when first class fares are, absurdly, allowed to fall below second class fares because second was filling up faster than first). Online ticket sales are typically restricted to SNCF-affiliated platforms, which tend to be less sophisticated, often not allowing you to select a specific seat — something that matters on a night train.

"Meanwhile, in the US, public transit is facing a death spiral."

There seem to be a few bright spots on the horizon for public transit in North America - https://www.opb.org/article/2020/12/09/cascadia-bullet-train-pacific-northwest-transportation/ . Of course it's a long way from planning to reality and this is going to be a very expensive undertaking and I haven't seen many details yet on who is going to pay for it.