The number of passengers travelling by train in the second quarter of 2026 stood at almost 15.5 million, down 5.8% compared with the same period in 2025, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).
According to the quoted source, passenger-kilometres fell 7.6% in the April-June period. Of the total number of passengers, 15.43 million travelled domestically and 61,000 internationally.
As regards rail freight transport, the volume of goods carried increased 9.3% compared with the second quarter of the previous year. A total of 9.786 million tonnes of goods were transported, of which 79.3% domestically.
Significant shares of total goods transported were accounted for by the following categories: coke and refined petroleum products (25.5%) and other goods (15.2%).
The technical and economic indicators measuring the use of rolling stock in rail transport that recorded positive changes compared with the second quarter of 2025 were: loaded wagons arriving from abroad (thousands of wagons), up 61.9%; the average turnaround time for freight wagons (days), up 42.6%; railcar mileage (thousands of railcar-kilometres), up 14.0%; the average commercial speed of freight trains (km/h), up 5.8%; and loaded wagons on the CFR network (thousands of wagons), up 0.6%, among others.
Negative changes compared with the second quarter of the previous year were recorded in the following indicators: average daily mileage of locomotives used for freight transport (km/day), down 11.7%; average gross weight of freight wagons (tonnes per train), down 6.5%; average static load of freight wagons (tonnes per axle), down 5.8%; and the average commercial speed of passenger trains (km/h), down 0.8%, among others.
