Fewer Romanians chose to travel by train in 2024
The number of passengers who traveled by train in the first nine months of 2024 was 53.71 million, a decrease of 4.4% compared to the same period last year, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) and cited by Agerpres.
The vast majority of passengers, 53.47 million, traveled domestically, while 239,000 took international trips.
Overall, rail passenger transport accounted for 17.5% of total passenger transport in the first nine months of 2024, surpassed by road transport, which had a share of 75.6%.
Rail freight transport also decreased by 11.1% compared to the January-September 2023 period, with 32.861 million tons of goods transported, of which 78.6% were within the country. The goods most transported were coke and refined petroleum products (24.2%) and coal, lignite, crude oil, and natural gas (18%).
According to the INS, most technical and economic indicators for the use of the rail vehicle fleet showed a negative trend compared to last year. The average daily mileage of locomotives used for freight transport (km/day) decreased by 13.3%, loaded wagons on the CFR network dropped by 12.7%, loaded wagons entering from abroad declined by 11%, the average daily mileage of freight wagons (km/day) decreased by 8.8%, and the average commercial speed of freight trains (km/h) fell by 6.6%.
Moreover, the average gross weight of freight wagons (tons/train) decreased by 3.6%. Similarly, the average daily mileage of passenger wagons (km/day) and the average commercial speed of passenger trains (km/h) decreased by 3.4%, locomotive mileage fell by 3.2%, train mileage dropped by 3%, and the mileage of railcars decreased by 1.3%.
(Photo source: Jerome CID | Dreamstime.com)
