Covid-19 epidemic plunged train travel by 35%

The Covid-19 epidemic not only sank air travel in 2020. The passenger traffic by train also received a severe blow, affected by reductions in mobility and travel.

The government's recommendation to telecommute and replace professional meetings with online meetings also influenced the drop in the number of trips.

According to Statistics Finland, 14.8 million trips in passenger traffic were travelled on Finnish railways in the third quarter of 2020, which is 35% fewer than in the corresponding quarter of last year.

The number of passenger kilometers traveled in train traffic totaled 774 million. Passenger kilometers went down by 38% year-on-year.

January-September

In January to September 2020, a total of 44.4 million trips were made in passenger traffic in Finland, which was 34% fewer than one year earlier. The number of passenger-kilometers totaled 2,231 millions, which was 38% lower than one year before.

A total of 9.3 million tonnes of goods were transported by rail in Finland during the third quarter of 2020. The transport volume of goods transported by rail totaled 2.4 billion tonne-kilometres.

Statistics Finland did not provide data on freight performance compared to the previous year. According to the statistics agency, the reason is that the results of rail freight transport from 2020 are not fully comparable with those of previous years due to changes made in the statistics.