Nightjet Overnight Sleeper trains across Europe Part II

As we reported some weeks ago OeBB, Austrian Railways have taken over the activities of CityNightLine, a DB German Railways subsidiary company and intend to continue offering them. Fewer services are offered, but more than would have been offered if CityNightLine had stayed in business.There is now an overnight Zurich Hamburg train which now travels via Basel, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. It turns out, or at least it looks like, bikes will be carried after Easter. Check bahn.de if you need to travel.  The hair in the soup is that although the northbound trains leave Mannheim at a minute to midnight and get into Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) at a sensible eight thirty-one, the southbound trains leave earlier, just before eight pm and get into Mannheim at four forty which is not the most convenient of trains.

Another event has been suggested to celebrate 200 years of the bicycle

I read recently that further suggestions were being considered by the City of Mannheim to be included in the festivities celebrating Karl Drais's pioneering hobby horse run in June 1817. The suggestion that caught my eye was a naked bicycle ride. OK, Mannheim is usually hot enough in summer to allow cycling in light weight clothing. In fact it is often too hot. If it is put on the official programme which I cannot see, I won't be taking part in this event. On the one hand I am over 70 and my body is no longer a thing of beauty and on the other hand the thought of my naked lower regions coming into contact with a Brooks' leather saddle does not appeal.

Preparations for an earlier clothed mass cycle ride in summer in Mannheim city centre

Deliveries in cities

We ordered and took delivery of  BioHort bicycle garage recently.

It comes knocked-down in two boxes weighing about 90kg. The two boxes were delivered in a 38ton lorry. We were obviously the last customers on this run as the load area was empty apart from a number of pallets. It struck me that using a diesel powered 38ton vehicle to deliver 90 or so kg was overkill. The same can be said of DHL, Hermes, UPS etc. who deliver smaller packages daily in diesel powered vans with a capacity of up to 14 cubic metres and a payload of two or so tons. 

Air pollution largely due to diesel powered vehicles is a major problem in cities. Air pollution is a problem taken very seriously by city governments all over the world. Two examples of the many programmes suggested:

• The Mayor of London has suggested that the British government pay diesel powered vehicle owners to scrap older dirty diesel vehicles and replace them with petrol engined ones (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/12/london-mayor-plans-to-scrap-diesels). 
• Munich has recently started a programme of subsidising purchase of electric cargo bikes and trikes (http://tinyurl.com/gv6t917). 

Our small German town, Viernheim, is part of a three province conurbation based around Ludwigshafen, Mannheim and Heidelberg with a number of smaller towns and villages in between. DHL distributes packages from a central office. It would ease air pollution if packages were then distributed by lorry to a centre in each town where local deliveries could be made by cargo trikes such as the Musketier (http://www.radkutsche.de in German) which can carry a maximum load of 300kg or the powered or unpowered Carla Cargo bicycle trailers (http://www.carlacargo.de/en/). Most of the settlements have letter distribution centres where the packages loaded on a pallet could be picked up.

UPS has pioneered low polluting deliveries in city centres for some years. In cooperation with the city of Hamburg, only e-transporters have been used  since 2012, and in the inner core there is the package delivery of four mobile parcel depots on foot, with a sack truck, a bicycle and pedelec. Each day, pollutant-free deliveries over ± 800km of were made. The concept is now much in demand and has been adapted to Offenbach am Main, Herne and Oldenburg.
This concept may well involve higher costs, but on the other hand blocked up lungs and heart problems due to pollution are not cheap to treat.

Nightjet Overnight Sleeper trains across Europe Part I

The good news is that OeBB, Austrian Railways have taken over the activities of CityNightLine, a DB German Railways subsidiary company and intend to continue offering them. The bad news is that fewer services are offered, but lots more than would have been offered if CityNightLine had stayed in business.
There is now an overnight Zurich Hamburg train which now travels via Basel, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. The even worse news is that the train does not carry bicycles except between Zurich and Basel. Why bother? Practically every Swiss train takes bikes, but an overnight link between south Germany and Hamburg for me and my bicycle would be a thing of wonder.
Correction 24.02.2017 It turns out or at least it looks like bikes will be carried after Easter. Check bahn.de if you need to travel.  The hair in the soup is that although the northbound trains leave Mannheim at a minute to midnight and get into Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) at a sensible eight thirty-one, the southbound trains leave earlier, just before eight pm and get into Mannheim at four forty which is not the most convenient of trains.