The Coronavirus epidemic and the subsequent restrictions adopted to stop the spread of the virus had a strong impact on the rail traffic of people. The government's recommendation to telecommute and to avoid travel, the layoffs, along with the temporary closure of the Uusimaa region, had an effect on this outcome.
According to Statistics Finland, in the second quarter of 2020, which coincided with the first wave of expansion of the virus, a total of 10.8 million trips in passenger traffic were traveled on Finnish railways, which is 52% fewer than in the corresponding quarter of last year.
The number of passenger kilometres in train traffic totaled 359 million. Passenger kilometres went down by 70% from the corresponding quarter of the year before. Passenger kilometres indicate that the number of trips decreased more in long-distance transport than in local transport.
Source: Statistics Finland.
First semester
In January to June 2020, a total of 29.5 million trips were made in passenger traffic, which was 34% fewer than one year earlier. In this period, the number of passenger-kilometres in train traffic totaled 1,457 million kilometres, which was 39% lower than one year before.
A total of 9.9 million tonnes of goods were transported by rail in Finland during the second quarter of 2020. The transport volume of goods transported by rail totaled 2.6 billion tonne-kilometres.
The performances of freight transport by rail starting from 2020 are not fully comparable with the data of earlier years due to changes made to the statistics.
