STATISTICS BRIEF

1

POLAND15 cities 979 km

1,051 m pax/y.

BALTIC/NORDICREGION

12 cities 482 km

375 m pax/y.

BENELUX10 cities645 km

700 m pax/y.

BRITISHISLES9 cities356 km

196 m pax/y.

FRANCE28 cities827 km

1,104 m pax/y.

WESTERNMEDITERRANEAN

29 cities809 km

623 m pax/y.

SOUTH-EASTERNEUROPE

29 cities992 km

1,277 m pax/y.

GERMANY49 cities 2,966 km

2,908 m pax/y.

CENTRALEUROPE

23 cities1,240 km

2,188 m pax/y.

INTRODUCTION

Tram and light rail systems are available in 389 cit-ies around the world, with more than half of them (204) in Europe. This Statistics Brief describes the

LIGHT RAIL AND TRAM: THE EUROPEAN OUTLOOK

NOVEMBER 2019

evolution of light rail transit (LRT) in Europe since 20151, and provides a snapshot of the situation in 2018.

1 UITP collects rail data according to a three-year cycle (Metro, LRT and Regional & Suburban Railways)

2

3 2017 data used for France, Poland and Switzerland2 Eurostat, 2017

LRT has experienced a renaissance since the new millen-nium, with no less than 108 new cities (re)opening their first line, of which 60 are from Europe. This does not in-clude new lines in existing systems and line extensions.

Between 2015 and 2018, 420 km of new LRT opened in Europe. This makes up 36% of LRT line openings world-wide. 2017 was a watershed year as, for the first time, greenfield LRT projects in Asia-Pacific exceeded those in Europe.

A REMARKABLE RENAISSANCE

Figure 1: LRT system opening per half-decade, 1985-2019

Figure 2: New LRT infrastructure (km), 2014-2018

Figure 3: Evolution of LRT development (km)

5

11

3

15 19 19

7

4

6

2

5

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5 1

1

1 2

1 1

1

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pre-1985 1985-89 1990-94 1995-99 2000-04 2005-09 2010-14 2015-19

Europe North America South America Eurasia Asia-Pacific MENA & Africa Cumulative # systems

+56%

267.2

30.3

420.5

68.1

135.4

197.5

34 Asia-Pacific Eurasia Europe South America MENA North America Africa

New LRT Infrastructure (km, 2015-18)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

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180

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Asia-Pacific Eurasia Europe South America MENA & Africa North America

With a total annual ridership in Europe of 10,422 million in 2018, LRT carries as many passengers as metros and regional/commuter rail, and 10 times more passengers than air travel in Europe.2 The small railways certainly do not play a small role in the sustainability of European cit-ies.

The symbolic threshold of 10 billion passengersper annum was reached in 2016.Germany and Central Europe make up half of all patron-age, the rest being distributed as shown on Figure 4.

RIDERSHIP

Figure 4: Ridership distribution3 (m. passengers), 2018

Figure 5: Ridership evolution in Europe (m. passengers), 2015-2018

28%

21% 12%

11%

10%

7%

6% 3%

2%

Ridership (m. passengers)

Germany

Central Europe

South-Eastern Europe

France

Poland

Benelux

Western Mediterranean

Nordic/Baltic

British Isles

28%

21% 12%

11%

10%

7%

6% 3%

2%

Ridership (m. passengers)

Germany

Central Europe

South-Eastern Europe

France

Poland

Benelux

Western Mediterranean

Nordic/Baltic

British Isles

9,753

10,119

10,288

10,422

9,700

9,800

9,900

10,000

10,100

10,200

10,300

10,400

10,500

2015 2016 2017 2018

© Katatonia

3

4 Please note, the outlined bars indicate estimations

LRT popularity is best measured by the annual number of LRT trips per inhabitant per year. The annual use ranges from 10 to 182 trips and can be explained by a variety of factors, mainly by the system development and sophis-tication.

The busiest LRT network is Budapest, Hungary, with 427 million passengers. All systems in Figure 9 are long-es-tablished tram networks. The only exception is Paris where LRT was re-introduced almost 30 years ago.

Figure 8: Number of LRT trips per year per inhabitant, 2017

Patronage data for 2018 is not yet available for all coun-tries (France, Poland and Switzerland are missing). How-ever, extrapolation yields a ridership growth of 6.9 % from 9,740 million in 2015 to 10,422 million passengers between 2015 and 2018 (See Figure 5). Demand growth is therefore 50% higher than the supply growth (km of line) over the same period of time, and signals a positive response from the travelling public.Figure 6 shows different ridership evolution according to regions, ranging from a strong 17.5 % in the British Isles, where infrastructure growth was also the strongest, to 1.5% in Poland.

With a ridership growth of 6.9% between 2015 and 2018, demand growth is 50% higher than the supply growth.Data about passenger-kilometers is available for 17 countries. The average LRT journey in Europe is 3.27km.

Figure 6: Ridership evolution by region (m. passengers) 2015-2018 4

Figure 7: Average distance per trip in selected countries (km), 2017

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

Germany Central Europe

South Eastern Europe

France Poland Benelux Western Mediter--ranean

Nordic/Baltic

British Isles

+5%

+12%+10.4% +1.5%

+12% +4.5%+13.5%

+17.5%

+5%

4.75

4.40

4.24

3.95

3.92

3.90

3.52

3.20

3.13

3.10

2.93

2.81

2.41

2.26

2.20

2.14

1.75

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

UK

Portugal

Sweden

Norway

Austria

Germany

Italy

Netherlands

France (Paris)

Hungary

Estonia

Spain

Serbia

Greece

Bosnia Herzegovina

Switzerland

Luxemburg European average

182 169

138

87

56 44

20 12 10

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

Central Europe

Poland Germany Benelux Nordic/Baltic

France South- Eastern Europe

Western Mediter--ranean

British Isles

Annual LRT trips / inhabitant

© Transport for Greater Manchester

4

The longest LRT network in Europe is Berlin (193 km) reaching third place worldwide after Melbourne (250km) and Saint Petersburg (246km).

Between 2015 and 2018, LRT infrastructure in Europe grew by 3.9% from 8,943 km to 9,296 km.

There are notable differences between network struc-tures across the countries. While the European average lies at 7.3 km, lines tend to be longer on average in coun-tries with newer systems and limited number of lines, while older and more complex systems feature lower av-erage line length.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Figure 10: Evolution of line length in Europe (km), 2015-2018

Figure 11: LRT network characteristics, 2018

Figure 12: Top-10 longest LRT systems in Europe (km), 2018

00

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

Germ

any

Centr

al

Europ

ePo

land

Franc

e

Bene

lux

Nord

ic/

Baltic

British

Isles

South

- Eas

tern

Europ

e Weste

rn

Medit

erran

ean

+2.5%

+1.5%+1% +5.5% +8.5% +4.5%

+4%+9.5% +8.7%

Figure 9: Top-10 busiest LRT systems in Europe (m. passengers), 2017

139

142.7

145.6

147.6

148.7

155.3

160

178

180.2

193.2

0 50 100 150 200 250

Paris

Prague

Leipzig

Brussels

Cologne

Düsseldorf

Budapest

Vienna

Milan

Berlin

Top-10 longest LRT Europe (km)

196

197

197

208

277

300

306

372

411

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

Brno

Zagreb

Berlin

Zurich

213Cologne

Warsaw

Paris

Vienna

Prague

Budapest

0

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British

Isles

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ltic

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-Easte

rn Eu

rope

Centr

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rope

Polan

d

Ave

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dist

ance

bet

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ops (

m)

Ave

rage

line

leng

th (k

m)

© UITP

5

The fleet available to operate the 1,276 LRT lines in Eu-rope consists of 20,754 trams and light rail vehicles.

Currently 51% of the total installed fleet in Europe are partial or full low-floor vehicles, with 100% of the fleet in France, Spain, Ireland, UK and Norway being low-floor vehicles.

A frequent rolling stock KPI is the average yearly mile-age per unit. The average annual mileage per vehicle in Europe is 52,000 km, ranging between 38,700 km and 77,500 km. The discrepancy can be partly explained by the fleet age structure. In addition, this value is theo-retical and based on the assumption that all vehicles are equally used.

MOBILE ASSET

Figure 13: Distribution of mobile assets by European regions, 2018

Figure 15: Average annual mileage per light rail vehicle (km), 2018

Figure 14: Low-floor vehicles by regions, 2018

Germany Central Europe

South-Eastern Europe

France

Poland

Benelux

Western Mediterranean

Nordic/Baltic

British Isles

12%

15%

24%

20%

8%

7%

7% 5%

2%

Germany Central Europe

South-Eastern Europe

France

Poland

Benelux

Western Mediterranean

Nordic/Baltic

British Isles

12%

15%

24%

20%

8%

7%

7% 5%

2%

57%

47%

100%

32%

65% 59%

29%

48% 50%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

Germ

any

Centr

al Eu

rope

Franc

e

Polan

d

Bene

lux

South

-Easte

rn Eu

rope

Nord

ic/Ba

ltic

British

Isles

Low-floor vehicles per regions

Weste

rn

Medit

erran

ean

Freq

uenc

y of

tota

l fle

et

Perc

enta

ge o

f tot

al fl

eet

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

80,000

British

Isles

Nord

ic/Ba

ltic

Franc

e

Polan

d

Centr

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rope

Germ

any

Bene

lux

Weste

rn Me

diterr

anea

n

South

-Easte

rn Eu

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European average: 52,000 km

© Leonid Andronov

Rue Sainte-Marie 6, B-1080 Brussels, Belgium | Tel +32 (0)2 673 61 00 | Fax +32 (0)2 660 10 72 | info@uitp.org | www.uitp.org

DIGITAL VERSION AVAIL ABLE ON

This is an official Statistics Brief of UITP, the International Association of Public Transport. UITP has more than 1,800 member companies in 100 countries throughout the world and represents the interests of key players in this sector. Its membership includes transport authorities, operators, both private and public, in all modes of collective passenger transport, and the industry. UITP addresses the economic, technical, organisation and management aspects of passenger transport, as well as the development of policy for mobility and public transport worldwide.

© UITP - All rights reserved - Responsible Publisher: Mohamed Mezghani, Rue Sainte Marie 6, B-1080 Brussels, Belgium - Legal deposit: D/2019/0105/22

This Statistics Brief was prepared by the Rail Unit of the UITP Secretariat.

NOVEMBER 2019 / AMENDED SEPTEMBER 2020

DEFINITION AND METHODOLOGY

The data for this document was extracted from a database compiled by UITP, using official company data and other authoritative sources (national sta-tistics office, national associations, etc.). LRT and trams are urban rail guided systems oper-ated at least partly on line-of-sight, on infrastruc-ture shared with other users and partly on their own infrastructure. Systems operated on guided rubber-tyred multi-articulated vehicles with Right-of-Way 2 are included.

Infrastructure predictions are based on scenarios developed from UITP’s rail project database. This Europe LRT landscape is based on the full LRT Statistics Report 2019 which includes further de-tails and analysis.

PERSPECTIVE

With continued pressure to reduce congestion, tackle air quality in cities and reduce greenhouse gas emission contributing to climate change, LRT will continue to ob-tain support of decision-makers and the travelling public in Europe. LRT is clean and space-efficient.

Figure 16: Forecast for new LRT infrastructure in Europe (km)

However, much attention and resources will go into the maintenance, modernisation and replacement of assets to keep ageing systems attractive and fit for operational purpose. For this reason, the growth of green-field pro-jects in Europe will continue to slow down.

183

167

103

117 108

173

112

92

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

New LRT infrastructure in Europe (km)

European average

The predicted surge in 2019 is influenced by the completion of 69km conversion project (tram-train in Aahrus, Denmark). Without this specific project, the annual figure would fit the downwards trend.