Passenger rail transport in the European Union has continued to grow and has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest edition of Eurostat’s report on European transport.
Passengers are returning to trains in Europe
Eurostat shows that in 2024, in the European Union, excluding Belgium, 8.3 billion passengers traveled on domestic rail routes, and another 150 million on international routes.
In total, rail passenger traffic reached 443 billion passenger-kilometers, an increase of 5.8% compared to 2023. More importantly, the 2024 level is already higher than that of 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
Relative to population, the European average was 958 km per capita for domestic train travel and 53 km per capita for international travel.
The highest figures for domestic traffic were recorded in Hungary, Austria, and France, with 1,513 km, 1,493 km, and 1,442 km per capita, respectively. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Greece had only 70 km per capita.For Romania, the picture stands in stark contrast to that of the European leaders. In the Eurostat chart on passenger rail traffic per capita in 2024, Romania is clearly in the lower half of the ranking, far behind countries such as Austria, France, or Hungary.
Where does rail have the largest share in European mobility
And when it comes to rail’s share of total passenger transport, the differences between countries are significant. Eurostat notes that, in 2023, the highest shares of passenger transport by rail were recorded in the Netherlands and Austria, both with over 10% of the total.
Rail freight: only 5.5% of total EU freight transport
While there is a clear sign of recovery for passengers, the picture is less encouraging for rail freight. In 2023, rail transport accounted for only 5.5% of total freight transport in the European Union, measured in ton-kilometers.
By comparison, maritime transport accounted for 67.4%, and road transport for 25.3%. Eurostat notes that rail’s share had fallen from 5.7% in 2013 to 5.2% in 2020, then recovered slightly to 5.5% in 2022 and 2023.
This means that, although rail remains important for certain industrial and logistics flows, it has not yet managed to shift the balance of power in European freight transport. Rail is recovering, but slowly, and is starting from a still-low share.
Germany dominates rail freight, and Poland remains the second-largest market
In terms of total freight volume transported by rail, Germany was by far the European leader in 2024, with 126 billion ton-kilometers, or 33.7% of the EU total, excluding Belgium. Next were Poland, with 56.7 billion ton-kilometers, and France, with 32.2 billion ton-kilometers.
Eurostat also shows that developments over the past decade varied significantly from one country to another. Between 2014 and 2024, the largest increase in rail freight was in Bulgaria, at 65%, followed by Croatia at 55.4%, Italy at 26.5%, and Poland at 19.5%.
At the same time, the Baltic states recorded the sharpest declines, with drops of 82% in Latvia, 81.7% in Estonia, and 58.7% in Lithuania.
What the Eurostat data reveals
The Eurostat report confirms two contrasting realities for European railways. On the one hand, passenger rail transport continues to regain ground and has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
On the other hand, in freight transport, rail remains far behind road and maritime transport.
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