--- title: "European Rail Statistics: Passenger Journeys and Rail Use" description: "Compare 2024 passenger journeys, passenger-kilometres and per-resident rail use across reporting European countries with Eurostat data." image: "https://everyrail.com/_astro/westbahn-train.DZmdDbhu.jpg" --- [Home]()Statistics [Home]()Statistics **Share** - - [Share on WhatsApp]() - [Share on X]() - [Share on Facebook]() - [Share by email]() [Book now]() Eurostat data · updated 2026-09-03 # European Rail Statistics: Passenger Journeys and Rail Use How much do people use rail across Europe? This page brings together Eurostat passenger journeys, passenger-kilometres and population data for a clear country comparison. The latest reference year is 2024 and every headline total is labelled as a sum of reporting countries, not an EU or Europe total. ## At a glance 34 countries are covered in the primary table, including 31 with reported 2024 passenger-journey data and 31 with reported passenger-kilometre data. Headline totals use the countries reporting each measure, while the year-on-year, 2019 comparison and historical trend figures use their own like-for-like cohorts. Passenger journeys**8.93 billion**31 reporting countries · reported-country sum Passenger-kilometres**467.2 billion**31 reporting countries · reported-country sum Journey change since 2023**+6.0%**29-country cohort Passenger-km change since 2023**+5.6%**29-country cohort Journeys since 2019**+1.4%**28-country pairwise cohort Passenger-km since 2019**+9.2%**28-country pairwise cohort Largest journey total**2.93 billion**Germany · reporting-country total Most journeys per resident**71.6**Switzerland · journeys/resident Most passenger-km per resident**2,543.6**Switzerland · km/resident International journey share**1.8%**28 reporting countries · international transport split These headline measures describe the countries that reported data for 2024. They are useful for comparing the scale and shape of rail use, but they are not a count of unique travellers and they do not form a reconstructed EU or Europe total. ### Reporting-country passenger journeys The reported-country sum is 8.93 billion passenger journeys across 31 countries. A journey is a passenger count, so one person making several trips can appear several times. ### Reporting-country passenger-kilometres The corresponding reported-country sum is 467.2 billion passenger-kilometres across 31 countries. This measure captures distance as well as volume: a passenger travelling 100 kilometres contributes 100 passenger-kilometres. ### Journeys rose year on year Across the 29 countries with comparable 2023 and 2024 observations, passenger journeys changed by 6.0%. The comparison sums only that common set. ### Passenger-kilometres rose year on year On the same comparable-year basis, passenger-kilometres changed by 5.6% between 2023 and 2024 across 29 countries. ### Journeys compared with 2019 The comparable 28-country 2019 to 2024 pairwise cohort recorded 1.4% change in passenger journeys. This is a like-for-like comparison, not a full-scope total. ### Passenger-kilometres compared with 2019 The comparable 28-country pairwise cohort recorded 9.2% change in passenger-kilometres from 2019 to 2024. Distance travelled therefore changed differently from the number of journeys. ### Largest journey total [Germany]() reported 2.93 billion passenger journeys, the highest 2024 value in the reporting-country ranking. The top five countries together account for 72.0% of the reported sum used for that ranking. ### Most journeys per resident [Switzerland]() recorded 72 journeys per resident, followed by [Luxembourg]() in the ranking. This denominator is the population on 1 January, not a count of unique passengers. ### Most passenger-kilometres per resident Switzerland recorded 2,544 passenger-kilometres per resident. [Austria]() followed at 1,621, while [Hungary]() was also among the leaders. ### International transport share In the detailed reporting-only dataset, international transport represented 1.8% of 9.11 billion passenger journeys and 5.2% of 476.5 billion passenger-kilometres. These are transport categories, not tourism shares. ## Five ways to read the data ### 2015 to 2024: fixed-cohort trend 27-country complete cohort · rounded passenger journeys and passenger-kilometres · Eurostat The trend chart follows a fixed complete cohort of 27 reporting countries, so each year uses the same countries and missing or break-flagged observations stay out of the cohort. Passenger journeys moved from 7.39 billion in 2015 to 8.06 billion in 2019, fell to 4.64 billion in 2020, and reached 8.17 billion in 2024. Passenger-kilometres show the same broad interruption, moving from the pre-disruption level to 204.5 billion in 2020 and 417.9 billion in 2024. A fixed 27-country cohort rises from 7.39 billion passenger journeys in 2015 to 8.17 billion in 2024, with a low point of 4.64 billion in 2020. [Download PNG]()[Download SVG]() ### Top passenger-journey countries Top five 2024 reporting-country observations · rounded passenger journeys · Eurostat This chart ranks the 2024 reporting-country observations by passenger journeys. [Germany]() leads with 2.93 billion, ahead of [France]() at 1.32 billion and [Italy]() at 842.8 million. [Spain]() and [Switzerland]() complete the top five at 691.7 million and 641.8 million. Country totals are not adjusted for population or network size. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland are the five largest reporting-country totals in 2024, with Germany at 2.93 billion and Switzerland at 641.8 million. [Download PNG]()[Download SVG]() ### Top journeys per resident Top five 2024 countries · journeys divided by population on 1 January · Eurostat Per-resident journeys make a different comparison from absolute passenger counts. [Switzerland]() leads at 72, [Luxembourg]() follows in the ranking, and [Austria]() is also in the top group. The rate uses each country's 1 January population. Switzerland leads at 71.6 journeys per resident, followed by Luxembourg in the ranking and Austria. [Download PNG]()[Download SVG]() ### Top passenger-kilometres per resident Top five 2024 countries · passenger-kilometres divided by population on 1 January · Eurostat Passenger-kilometres per resident add distance to the comparison. [Switzerland]() records 2,544, [Austria]() 1,621, and [Hungary]() is third in the ranking, followed by [France]() and [Germany](). A high value can reflect longer journeys as well as more journeys. Switzerland leads at 2,543.6 passenger-kilometres per resident, followed by Austria at 1,620.5 and Hungary in the top group. ### 2019 to 2024 change Largest absolute country changes in passenger journeys · percent · 28-country pairwise cohort · Eurostat The comparable 28-country pairwise cohort changed by +1.4% for journeys and +9.2% for passenger-kilometres between 2019 and 2024. [Download PNG]()[Download SVG]() ## Country table The source request covers 31 national and international transport geographies, while the complete international split uses 28 countries with all three transport categories available. It sums 8.95 billion national journeys and 165.5 million international journeys out of 9.11 billion total journeys. For passenger-kilometres, the split is 451.7 billion national and 24.87 billion international out of 476.5 billion total. [Luxembourg]() has the highest reported international journey share at 30%, followed by [Bulgaria]() at 8% and [Denmark]() at 8%. The split is not interchangeable with the primary passenger totals above, and it must not be read as a tourism measure. The primary table covers 34 country rows. Blank values are unavailable, confidential or not reported, never zero; metric totals and comparison cohorts above can therefore use smaller, explicitly labelled country sets. Filter countriesSort by34 countries | Country | Journeys thousand | Passenger-km million | Population 1 January | Journeys / resident | Passenger-km / resident | Journeys change 2023 to 2024 | Journeys change 2019 to 2024 | International share | Source status | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Austria]()AT | 348,219 | 14,842 | 9,158,750 | 38.0 | 1,620.5 | +7.0% | +10.6% | 4.2% | Reported | | [Belgium]()BE | Confidential | Confidential | 11,817,096 | Unavailable | Unavailable | Unavailable: confidential | Unavailable: confidential | Unavailable | Rail totals confidential; International split confidential | | [Bosnia and Herzegovina]()BA | 421 | 30 | 3,417,089 (provisional) | 0.1 | 8.8 | -6.0% | -35.9% | Unavailable | provisional | | [Bulgaria]()BG | 21,141 | 1,498 | 6,445,481 | 3.3 | 232.4 | -3.1% | -0.9% | 8.5% | Reported | | [Croatia]()HR | 24,590 | 1,148 | 3,861,967 | 6.4 | 297.3 | +3.1% | +24.0% | 1.3% | Reported | | [Czechia]()CZ | 191,171 | 10,294 | 10,900,555 | 17.5 | 944.4 | +3.9% | -1.2% | 4.6% | Reported | | [Denmark]()DK | 210,447 | 6,481 | 5,961,249 | 35.3 | 1,087.2 | +3.7% | +1.9% | 8.2% | Reported | | [Estonia]()EE | 7,944 | 385 | 1,374,687 | 5.8 | 280.1 | +1.8% | -5.1% | 0.2% | Reported | | [Finland]()FI | 84,574 | 5,436 | 5,603,851 | 15.1 | 970.0 | +2.6% | -8.9% | 0.0% | Reported | | [France]()FR | 1,320,115 | 107,346 | 68,669,303 (provisional) | 19.2 | 1,563.2 | +7.6% | +4.3% | 2.3% | provisional | | [Germany]()DE | 2,929,624 | 109,135 | 83,456,045 | 35.1 | 1,307.7 | +7.4% | -0.3% | 0.8% | Reported | | [Greece]()EL | 14,053 | 727 | 10,375,764 | 1.4 | 70.1 | +9.7% | -28.3% | 0.0% | Reported | | [Hungary]()HU | 304,902 | 14,988 | 9,584,627 | 31.8 | 1,563.8 | Unavailable: confidential | Unavailable: confidential | 1.3% | Reported | | [Ireland]()IE | 50,664 | 2,486 | 5,351,681 | 9.5 | 464.5 | +10.0% | +1.2% | 1.3% | Reported | | [Italy]()IT | 842,822 | 55,872 | 58,971,230 | 14.3 | 947.4 | +3.5% | -6.2% | 0.5% | Reported | | [Latvia]()LV | 19,508 | 698 | 1,878,575 | 10.4 | 371.6 | +13.9% | +4.8% | 0.4% | Reported | | LiechtensteinLI | 1,737 | 29 | 40,015 | 43.4 | 724.7 | +3.0% | +60.7% | Unavailable | Reported | | [Lithuania]()LT | 5,114 | 441 | 2,885,891 | 1.8 | 152.8 | +8.4% | +2.5% | 2.0% | Reported | | [Luxembourg]()LU | 31,263 | 556 | 672,050 | 46.5 | 827.3 | +9.0% | +25.0% | 30.3% | Reported | | [Montenegro]()ME | 863 | 70 | 623,680 | 1.4 | 112.2 | +1.1% | -12.5% | Unavailable | Reported | | [Netherlands]()NL | 382,687 (break in time series) | 17,578 (break in time series) | 17,942,942 | 21.3 | 979.7 | Not comparable: reporting-method change | Not comparable: reporting-method change | 2.9% | break in time series | | [North Macedonia]()MK | 238 | 26 | 1,826,247 | 0.1 | 14.2 | -15.0% | -56.6% | 0.0% | Reported | | [Norway]()NO | 81,933 | 3,876 | 5,550,203 | 14.8 | 698.4 | +4.7% | +1.9% | 0.7% | Reported | | [Poland]()PL | Confidential | Confidential | 36,620,970 | Unavailable | Unavailable | Unavailable: confidential | Unavailable: confidential | 1.0% | Rail totals confidential | | [Portugal]()PT | 218,886 | 5,447 | 11,204,347 | 19.5 | 486.2 | +9.2% | +24.7% | 0.1% | Reported | | [Romania]()RO | 70,802 | 5,942 | 19,067,576 (estimated) | 3.7 | 311.6 | -4.7% | +1.6% | 0.4% | estimated | | [Slovakia]()SK | 72,056 | 3,571 | 5,424,687 | 13.3 | 658.3 | +0.5% | -10.7% | 6.7% | Reported | | [Slovenia]()SI | 15,704 | 886 | 2,123,949 | 7.4 | 417.1 | +8.4% | +18.4% | 3.2% | Reported | | [Spain]()ES | 691,733 | 38,038 | 48,619,695 | 14.2 | 782.4 | +3.8% | +8.9% | 0.2% | Reported | | [Sweden]()SE | 252,371 | 13,626 | 10,551,707 | 23.9 | 1,291.4 | +3.7% | -4.6% | 6.4% | Reported | | [Switzerland]()CH | 641,799 | 22,796 | 8,962,258 | 71.6 | 2,543.6 | +5.6% | +1.0% | 2.4% | Reported | | [Turkey]()TR | 24,021 | 6,273 | 85,372,377 | 0.3 | 73.5 | -6.2% | -8.3% | 2.8% | Reported | | UkraineUA | 65,737 | 16,699 | Not reported | Unavailable | Unavailable | +1.2% | Unavailable: not reported | Unavailable | Population not reported; International split not reported | | [United Kingdom]()UK | Not reported | Not reported | 68,903,810 | Unavailable | Unavailable | Unavailable: not reported | Unavailable: not reported | Unavailable | Rail totals not reported; International split not reported | Status flags are retained from Eurostat. Belgium and Poland are confidential; the UK is not reported for the primary passenger measures; Ukraine has no population denominator in this snapshot. ## Sources, downloads and methodology **Passenger journeys** use Eurostat's `THS_PAS` unit, meaning thousand passengers carried. They count journeys rather than unique people. **Passenger-kilometres** use Eurostat's `MIO_PKM` unit, meaning million passenger-kilometres. They combine passenger volume with distance travelled. **Per-resident measures** divide thousand passenger journeys multiplied by 1,000, or million passenger-kilometres multiplied by 1,000,000, by the Eurostat `DEMO_GIND` JAN population on 1 January. They are comparisons against a resident-population denominator, not average daily use and not a unique-person rate. **Reporting-country territoriality** matters. The primary measures are observations reported for a country's rail activity and are grouped by the reporting geography. They are not a cross-border origin and destination count, a count of that country's residents travelling abroad, or a reconstructed total for Europe. **The historical trend** uses the fixed 27-country cohort from 2015 to 2024. A country enters the trend only when the required observations are available without a methodological-break exclusion. The latest-year overview instead reports every available primary country observation, so its country count can differ. The 2019-to-2024 comparisons use a separate 28-country pairwise cohort; they are not the fixed 27-country trend. **International transport** comes from `RAIL_PA_TYPEPAS` only. INTL is divided by TYPEPAS TOTAL for the same reporting country, year and unit. The detailed reporting-only scope contains 28 countries for 2024. It does not use `RAIL_PA_TOTAL` as the denominator, and international transport is not labelled as tourism. **Scope exclusions and data quality.** This page covers the railway passenger measures in the named Eurostat datasets. Metro, tram and light rail are not added as separate modes. Eurostat status flags remain visible; they describe the source observation and are not silently discarded from the latest table. Confidential observations for [Belgium]() and [Poland]() are unavailable rather than zero. The [United Kingdom]()'s primary 2024 passenger measures are unavailable because they are not reported, while Ukraine's population is unavailable because it is not reported. Missing observations and observations with a methodological break are excluded from fixed historical cohorts and percentage-change rankings where the derived rules require it. There is no reconstructed EU total. Adding reporting-country observations would mix a changing coverage set and could imply a geography the source does not provide. Read every aggregate above as a labelled reporting-country sum with its stated country count. The page uses Eurostat datasets `RAIL_PA_TOTAL`, `DEMO_GIND` and `RAIL_PA_TYPEPAS`. The source links, dataset documentation, retrieval timestamp and DOI identifiers are listed with the data. Eurostat data is reused under the European Commission's standard reuse conditions; keep Eurostat and the relevant dataset identifier in any downstream use. Download the current country table as CSV at /data/statistics/european-rail-statistics.csv. The file follows RFC 4180 and contains one row per primary 2024 country observation. Blank cells mean unavailable, not zero. The JSON data file is included in the page download controls and carries source status, formulas and coverage details for reproducible review. Use the machine-readable files for reproducible analysis. The JSON preserves formulas, source flags and coverage; the CSV contains one row per primary 2024 country observation. [Download CSV]()[Download JSON]() [RAIL\_PA\_TOTAL DOI and data]() · [DEMO\_GIND DOI and data]() · [RAIL\_PA\_TYPEPAS DOI and data]() · [European Commission reuse and copyright notice]() · [Eurostat rail passenger transport methodology]() The Netherlands metadata records a new passenger methodology from 2024, so its 2023 and 2024 observations should not be compared directly. See [Eurostat's Netherlands rail passenger transport methodology note](). Data snapshot last updated 2026-09-03T23:00:00+02:00; generated 2026-09-11. Values can be provisional, estimated or revised. No EU total is reconstructed. ## Further reading To turn a country comparison into a trip, browse EveryRail's country pages and route guides for station-level planning. The statistics show national reporting patterns; they do not replace a route's timetable, ticket or station information. [Explore countries]()[Browse trains and routes]()[Compare rail passes]() ## Limitations The latest complete source year available in this snapshot is 2024. Coverage differs by dataset and country: 34 primary country rows are present, 30 have all latest primary measures, 31 report latest journeys, 31 report latest passenger-kilometres, and 33 report a latest population denominator. The source request includes 31 typepas reporting geographies, while the complete international split covers 28 countries. Values can be provisional, estimated, revised or affected by a break in series, and the data is not a forecast. 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