Rail passenger transport reaches new peak in 2023

In 2023, 429 billion passenger-kilometres (pkm) were registered via rail, up from 386 billion in 2022 (+11.2%). This is the highest number reported by main rail undertakings since the start of the data collection in 2004.

The demand for passenger transport increased by 9.4% between 2015 and 2019, when a peak of 411 billion pkm was registered. Compared with 2020, the year that registered the lowest performance, at 221 billion pkm, the number of passenger-kilometres in 2023 almost doubled.

Rail passenger performance increased in all quarters of 2023, compared to the same quarters of 2022. The first quarter of 2023 recorded the highest change, with 21 billion rail pkm more than in the same quarter in 2022, representing an increase of 29.1%.

This information comes from data on railway passenger transport published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained articles on railway passenger transport statistics - quarterly and annual data and on railway freight transport statistics.

Source dataset: rail_pa_typepas

Out of 8 billion rail passengers recorded in 2023 in the EU, almost half were travelling in Germany (33.9%) and France (15.0%). The number of passengers travelling by rail increased by more than 25% in Croatia (29.0%), Ireland (28.7%) and Luxembourg (25.1%). By contrast, Greece recorded the largest reduction in the number of rail passengers, 17.0%.

Rail freight transport sees small decline

Looking at EU rail freight transport for main undertakings, it reached 378 billion tonne-kilometres (tkm). This represented a 4.9% decline compared with 2022. When considering the data of the last decade, the level of 2023 is the lowest since 2015 with the exception of the COVID-year 2020 when rail freight performance dropped by 8.4% to 367 tkm.

Rail freight performance declined in all quarters of 2023 compared with the same quarters in 2022, with the biggest decrease observed in the second (-9.2%) and third quarter (-7.5%).

Source dataset: rail_go_quartal