CFLs Transports Record 28.7m Passengers in 2023

On Monday 15 January 2024, Luxembourg's railway operator, the CFL, announced that it recorded a new passenger record on their trains with 28.7 million passengers recorded in 2023 across all lines of the national rail network. 

This figure far exceeds the number of customers recorded in 2022 (22 million) and is well above the pre-COVID record figure of 25 million travellers who travelled with CFL in 2019.

With more than nine million travellers in 2023 (+36% compared to 2022), the Luxembourg – Esch-sur-Alzette – Rodange line remains the busiest, ahead of the Northern line (Luxembourg – Troisvierges – Gouvy) with 5.8 million of customers (+13%) and the Lorraine route (Luxembourg – Bettembourg – Metz/Nancy line) with 5.6 million customers, an increase of more than 45%, due in particular to the travel of numerous cross-border workers.

The line from Luxembourg to Athus/Longwy via Rodange has 3.4 million customers for 2023 (+23%). The Luxembourg – Kleinbettingen – Arlon line has 2.5 million customers (+31%) and the Luxembourg – Wasserbillig – Trier line has 2.1 million customers (+35%).

After the decline in 2020, due to the pandemic (14.5 million customers), the number of travellers continues to grow. 

In order to meet this growth, the CFL is currently carrying out a major investment programme in rolling stock. The commissioning of the 34 new Coradia Stream High Capacity railcars, planned from the first half of 2024, will make it possible to increase the supply of seats on trains by 46% by 2025-2026 (38,751 seats in total) while gradually replacing older generation railcars.

“We welcome this new attendance record with humility and responsibility, warmly thanking our customers for their trust and loyalty throughout the year,” declared Marc Wengler, General Director of CFL. "By choosing the train, our customers reassure us in our investments in new state-of-the-art rolling stock and in the pursuit of a vast programme of infrastructure works, in particular to encourage multimodality in daily travel. This dynamic reinforces our ambition to constantly improve the quality of our services and to make the train the means of transport capable of meeting the challenges of sustainable development and the decarbonization of individual transport. We can meet these challenges thanks to our 5,000 employees who are committed to serving our customers on a daily basis. The underlying trend in favour of the train represents a great recognition of their work for which we thank them warmly."