European rail networks: size vs. how much they get used, 2024
European passengers made 8.7 billion train trips in 2024. The networks they rode on vary by more than 100x in how intensively they are used, from packed Dutch and Swiss lines to sparsely used tracks in the Balkans and Baltics.
Source: Eurostat — Railway transport: length of tracks (ttr00003) and passenger transport (ttr00015)
Europe's busiest rail networks are not always the biggest. Germany and France move the most passengers overall, but the Netherlands and Switzerland use their track far more intensively.
European rail networks: size vs. how much they get used, 2024
Each dot is a country. Horizontal position is the total length of its railway tracks; vertical position is the number of passenger-kilometres carried that year. Color shades from pale yellow (sparsely used networks) to deep red (heavily used).
Track length is total route length of railway tracks in operation (Eurostat ttr00003). Passenger transport is passenger-kilometres on national territory (Eurostat ttr00015). Color shades from pale yellow (low passenger-kilometres per kilometre of track) to deep red (high). Not shown: Belgium and the EU27 aggregate (Eurostat marks the 2024 passenger figures confidential); the United Kingdom and Ukraine (no 2024 passenger figure); Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo (not reported in ttr00015).
Who uses their rail most
According to Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office, the Netherlands had the most intensely used passenger rail network in the EU. In 2024 it carried 17 billion passenger-kilometres on only about 3,000 km of track.
In second place is non-EU neighbor Switzerland, with 5,300 km of track, and over 21 billion passenger-km. France is the highest-intensity country among the large networks. Its 27,500 km of track carry 107 billion passenger-km.
Italy moves 56 billion passenger-km on a 17,000-km network.
Germany has Europe's largest passenger rail system by absolute volume (109 billion passenger-km), but spread across a sprawling 39,000 km network, its per-km intensity sits behind France and Italy.
Luxembourg has the shortest track length, only 271 km, and it still moves around 2.1 million pkm per km of track. Despite its size, its per-km intensity sits in the same league as Austria's (a network more than 20 times longer) and well ahead of Czechia's (about 35 times longer).
At the other end of the chart, North Macedonia sits well below everyone else. Just 26 million passenger-km moved across its 683 km of track in 2024, less than one thousandth of Germany's total.
The three Baltic states cluster tightly above it. Lithuania runs the largest of them at 1,924 km but only carries 441 million passenger-km. Latvia, with a slightly shorter network (1,831 km), moves more passengers (698 million passenger-km). Estonia is smaller again, at 1,171 km, and carries the lowest total of the three (385 million passenger-km).
Bulgaria is the size outlier of this group, its 4,025 km of track stretching more than double Lithuania's. It also moves by far the most passengers in the bottom five, 1,498 million passenger-km, roughly twice Latvia's volume. Even so, on a per-km basis it ranks second-lowest of the five at 0.37 M pkm/km, with only Lithuania (0.23) below it.
A push from Brussels
Travel by train is making a comeback in Europe, and especially the EU. Earlier this week, Eurostat reported that in 2024 passengers made a striking 8.7 billion trips by train.
Across the bloc, there is a concerted push to revive and improve existing rail infrastructure.
Last year, the European Commission released a plan with the goal of speeding up the development of high-speed rail across the EU.
"High-speed rail is not just about cutting travel times - it is about uniting Europeans, strengthening our economy, and leading the global race for sustainable transport," said the Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas.
Euronews recently reported on the Commission proposal that aims to simplify buying tickets across multiple rail operators in one transaction. Not only will booking be easier, they say, but passengers will be re-routed without having to pay for a new ticket, and they will get compensation for the overall delay.
This "one journey, one ticket, full rights" proposal would give passengers a smoother travel experience. It also serves to advance the EU's climate objectives.
Looking ahead
Railway transport boasts the lowest greenhouse gas emissions of any major mode, but it will almost certainly face new challenges in the years ahead.
According to the European Union Agency for Railways' 2026 report on rail resilience to climate change, Europe's rail system is most vulnerable to river and coastal floods, moderately exposed to heatwaves, cold waves, and wildfires, but only slightly affected by windstorms, and unaffected by droughts.
Those risks fall hardest on the very networks that fill the top of the chart: a flood that shuts 100 km of Dutch or Swiss track strips many more passenger-km from the system than the same disruption on a sparsely used Baltic line.