Thursday 9 October 2025

Traffic Trends Among UIC Member Companies in 2024

Provisional Results, UIC Statistics Platform

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1. Summary

In 2024, rail passenger traffic volumes continued to grow across all UIC regions, resulting in an overall increase of 7% compared to 2023. For the first time since the pandemic, global annual passenger traffic returned to the 2019 pre-COVID levels.

On the other hand, rail freight transport in 2024 did not change, with no overall growth. This global stagnation is the result of opposing trends, with widespread decline in many companies, particularly across Europe, where freight traffic volumes fell by an estimated 8% in the EU-27, while being offset by significant growth in India, where Indian Railways recorded a 6% increase.

Note: Not all railway undertakings participated in the survey. As such, the market overview presented here is partial and should be interpreted with this limitation in mind.

2. Passenger traffic trends

Rail passenger traffic around the world dropped by more than 50% (see Figures 1 and 3) in 2020 due to the pandemic. Recovery was gradual through 2021 and 2022, then accelerated markedly in 2023 and culminated in a full return to pre-crisis levels by 2024.

Asia continues to dominate the sector, with Indian Railways and China Railways together accounting for over 2.6 trillion passenger-kilometres in 2024. China Railways recovered more quickly, surpassing pre-COVID levels by 2023 and having maintained growth since. Indian Railways is still slightly below 2019 levels but is showing a strong upward trend.

In Europe, recovery since 2020 has also been robust, driven by major operators such as the National Railways of France (SNCF), German Railways (DB AG), Italian State Railways (FS), and the Spanish National Railway Network (RENFE). Notably strong growth was also recorded by Polish State Railways (PKP), Hungarian State Railways (MÁV), and Turkish State Railways (TCDD).

Passenger volumes remain comparatively low in Africa, but modest growth is evident, especially for the Transgabonese Operating Company (SETRAG) and Moroccan National Railways (ONCF). In the Americas, passenger traffic continues to recover at a slower pace, although the USA’s Amtrak has now exceeded its 2019 ridership levels.

3. Freight traffic trends

Since 2019, freight rail transport has shown diverging patterns across regions and operators (see Figures 2 and 3).

Supported by sustained growth, which is led by China Railways, Indian Railways, and Kazakhstan Railways (KTZ), Asia maintains a dominant position. In contrast, Europe is facing widespread decline, with notable drops in 2023 and 2024 for operators such as PKP, SNCF, DB, and Lithuanian Railways (LTG). Nonetheless, some companies, like FS, have managed to reverse this trend.

In Africa, traffic volumes remain modest but are gradually increasing, particularly for ONCF. In the United States, according to an Association of American Railroads’ (AAR) reported trend [1], rail freight volumes remain high but have stagnated since the 2020 downturn.

Overall, 2024 marks a plateau in global rail freight activity. From 2023 to 2024, China Railways saw a 1% decline, while KTZ and AAR reported stable traffic volumes. Only Indian Railways stood out with a 6% growth.

For more detailed information, please consult the monthly and quarterly reports on passenger, freight, and train traffic, available online via the UIC web application for UIC statistics correspondents at: https://stats.uic.org/login.aspx.

Quarterly reports are also available on the extranet at: https://extranet.uic.org/en/file/287261.

The list of companies participating in monthly data collections and presented in the graphs can be found on extranet at:
https://extranet.uic.org/en/file/288862.

Annual data is available from RAILISA at: https://uic-stats.uic.org/select/.

Acknowledgments:

Many thanks to all of the correspondents who contributed to providing the data used for this brief overview from the UIC Statistics Platform.

For more general information, please contact the UIC Statistics Unit at stat at uic.org.

For further information, please contact us here: https://uic.org/about/contact

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Figure 1(Figure 1
Figure 1 Passenger-kilometres (millions) for 2019 (white bar), 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 (grey bars) and 2024 (black bar). The y axis is a logarithmic scale. Railway companies are grouped by region, with percentage values showing the average change between 2023 and 2024.
Figure 2(Figure 2
Figure 2 Freight traffic (tonne-kilometres in millions), with the key being the same as for Figure 2. The y axis is also a logarithmic scale. AAR data only relates to traffic carried by Class 1 companies in the United States.
Figure 3(Figure 3
Figure 3 The left-hand graph shows the monthly passenger traffic index for the January 2019 to December 2024 period. The base reference (100) for the index is January 2019. Data available for some UIC railway members has been combined and is presented by region: “EU-27”, “Other Europe”, “Africa”, “America”, “Middle East”, “Other Asia & Oceania” plus China Railways (CR), Indian Railways (IR) and East Japan Railways (EJR). The list of railways included in the aggregates, e.g. “EU-27”, is shown in Figure 1. The right-hand graph shows the same data but for freight traffic. The aggregates of UIC railway members, for which data is available, are represented by region: “EU-27”, “Other Europe”, “Africa” and “Other Asia and Oceania” (see Figure 2 for the list of railways), plus China Railways (CR), Indian Railways (IR), Kazakhstan Railways (KTZ) and Class 1 companies from the Association of American Railroads (AAR) in the US. EJR and AAR data was originally provided by quarter and has therefore been adjusted to the month-by-month scale used in both graphs. Data from Indian Railways has been calculated using monthly passengers/tonnes carried, multiplied by the mean distance covered by one passenger/tonne.