During a recent trip on a night train between Paris and Nice, I began to wonder about the sleeper train scene in the USA. Cradled by the purring of the train and the beauty of the passing landscapes, I was sharing a berth with five other women in a women-only sleeping car, which felt a little like a sleepover with strangers. But it also felt like sorority, and I enjoyed the safety and empowerment of being exclusively among women.
Unlike the cramped airplanes where my long legs are always too long, I slept on a twin bed with fresh blanket, sheets, and pillow. The sheets were certainly not silk, but good enough to surrender to the arms of Morpheus. At 10pm, the conductor whispered into the mic: “Bonne nuit. The announcements will stop until the next stop in Marseille at 6am.” With this lullaby I fell asleep, waking up hours later to the gentle voice of the same conductor and the smell of saucisson from my one-night roommate’s breakfast.
Through the window, the Mediterranean sea greeted me with fifty shades of pink and blue.
Since moving from France to the U.S. for college, though, I haven’t had ridden an overnight train like this — because there are few to be found.
While iconic scenes in Hitchcock’s 1959 masterpiece North by Northwest captured the romance of sleeper trains, that era quickly waned in America with the rise of the car. Sleeper trains faded from the spotlight in the U.S. with the creation of the interstate highway system in 1956, as more and more Americans turned to automobile transportation and gradually abandoned train travel.
By the time Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant were trading flirtatious glances aboard the 20th Century Limited, more Americans than ever were also flying across the country on airplanes, accelerating the decline of trains even faster.
Those tradeoffs have had dire environmental consequences. For the same distance, night trains in the European Union produce just 3.6 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions a plane does. And as awareness about climate change rises alongside fear of air travel, sleeper trains could be poised for a comeback — if the U.S. catches up to Europe and Asia in rail infrastructure.
A tenant on the rails
According to Professor Owen Gutfreund, Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, America’s has historically regulated trains more tightly than cars, while investing far less federal money in rails than highways — to the detriment of everyone on the tracks.
“The highway system made it much easier to drive long distances,” said Gutfreund. “The buses were not hindered by the same regulations that railroads faced, and the buses could use the free long-distance highways to travel.”
While Congress increased federal support for rail with the creation of Amtrak in 1971, the quasi-governmental agency still generally doesn’t own the tracks on which trains travel, except on the North Eastern Corridor (NEC) connecting Washington DC to Boston.
That means Amtrak is largely a tenant on the railroads — and if a passenger train is stuck behind one of the freight carriers that do own the rails, it will slow down to match the freight train’s speed.
“The freight trains are running 35 miles an hour, so it makes it very difficult for Amtrak to operate 80 mile per hour trains, even though that’s by international standards quite slow,” said Sean Jeans-Gail, the Vice-President of the National Association of Railroad Passengers.
The pros of sleeper trains…
At a time when everything moves so fast — too fast perhaps — some advocates argue that the slowness of sleeper trains isn’t a bad thing.
It took about 52 hours for Sojourner White – a travel vlogger or also known as the Train Travel Queen — to travel from Chicago to San Francisco by train. But she argues that long trip was not only a way of transportation, but also an opportunity to refresh the mind and to engage in new activities – not to mention see the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada roll by.
“Growing up, when I would go on road trips, I would have a CD player; now I have podcasts, I bring books, I bring a word search, and I look at the view in the observation car,” said White. “I feel like the hustle culture is definitely how we operate a lot in the US, and it’s nice to take a break from that.”
The other perk of the sleeper trains, according to White, is the opportunity to meet people.
“Because I am a solo traveler, the way it works is that when you’re in the dining car, I’m often eating with a random couple,” she said. “It’s some small talk of who are you, where are you from, what are you doing on the train by yourself.”
These are standard conversations that could happen anywhere, but through these chance encounters, White — who recently left her job as a social worker to become a full-time travel vlogger — has also connected with other educators and social workers, leading to deeper discussions about life beyond the rails.
…and the cons
However, White recognizes that boarding a sleeper train is a luxury that requires having plenty of time to spare. Having enough vacation time to take a 52-hour trip is a rare gift in America; according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in March 2024, American employees get on average 11 vacation days after one year of service in private industry, and 13 vacation days in the state and local government.
In contrast, European countries, where sleeper trains are more common, tend to have more generous vacation policies. For instance, in countries such as France or Germany, employees often get around 25 to 30 days of paid vacation annually.
Sleeper trains are expensive, too; White paid $800 for her Chicago to San Francisco ticket.
“I would love to get an overnight sleeper car for an affordable price,” added Jeans-Gail, reflecting on his own train journeys. “But oftentimes because the Portland to San Francisco is a very popular route [with] very beautiful scenery, it is tough to find a sleeper car for less than a thousand.”
At the time of our interview, a round trip flight from San Francisco from Portland cost about $250; in France, by contrast, I only paid 40 euros ($44 USD) for my train ticket between Paris and Nice.
According to Jean-Gail, the expensive price of a sleeper berth is a matter of simple economics: there are a few overnight trains available and a lot of demand, driving prices up. And limited government funding for rail infrastructure probably won’t increase that supply anytime soon.
The limited government funding for railroads
For Gutfreund, who studies the history of American transportation, expensive overnight train prices can’t be fully understood without considering public investment in the automobile infrastructure.
“You could drive hundreds and hundreds of miles without paying anything other than a very, small gas tax, which didn’t come close to paying for the real costs of the infrastructure,” he added. “Railroads have to pay for their own infrastructure costs where cars don’t.”
Gutfreund explains that the U.S. government provides significant funding for the construction and maintenance of highways through programs like the Federal-Aid Highway Program, whereas there is a little government funding for rail.
In Europe, it’s often the other way around.
“[In France], they have less public support for the highway infrastructure,” he added. “The rail has better funding in Europe and also the automobile has less direct subsidy in Europe. You have to look at both sides of the scale to understand why rail is less popular in the US.
“The cultural power of a hundred years of paying for automobile infrastructure and starving rail-based infrastructure has led to value automobile transport and devalued rail transport,” Gutfreund continued. “And this is rooted in American culture.”
A bipartisan investment in the railroad system
Despite these challenges, some representatives are still advocating for long-haul trains. Senator Ed Markey (D – Mass) is proposing with Rep. Deluzio the “All Aboard Act” that would allocate $200 billion over the next five years to build high-speed rail, expand passenger rail services, and electrify the most polluting railyards and corridors.
For Gutfreund, bills like that can’t pass soon enough.
“We need a sustained commitment for trains, we’ve had a sustained commitment for over a hundred years to build automobile infrastructure,” he added. “But we have had only intermittent inconsistent commitment for proper funding for rail-based transportation.”
