The CFL carried 31.3m passengers in 2024, an increase of 9% in one year. With the acquisition of 34 new Coradia railcars by 2026, this figure will increase by a further 46%. The CFL will therefore be able to carry almost 46m passengers in 2026. “For the time being, to carry out this count, we call on an external company to do it for us at a certain time of the year. With the new Coradia equipment, the counting will be automated. It will be done automatically when people get on and off, and even movements within the train will be counted automatically to assess seating capacity. So we’ll be able to see how many people are actually using the train so that we can make the best possible adjustments,” explains the CFL’s managing director, 
Together with the chairman of the board of directors, Jeannot Waringo, and the main managers of the various units of the Luxembourg rail group, Wengler presented the CFL’s annual report for 2024. The figures are almost all in the green, including turnover of €1.215bn (+7.05%), net profit of €25.6m (+39.89%) and a punctuality rate of 90.8% (+0.78%). The CFL freight group (CFL Cargo and CFL Multimodal) posted a result of €5.4m, compared with €0.6m in 2023, an increase of 800%. “CFL Freight’s net result is boosted by that of CFL Cargo [€7.2m compared with €3m in 2023, editor’s note], as that of CFL Multimodal remains negative, at -€1.8m,” comments CFL multimodal director 
6m passengers on the Luxembourg-Thionville-Metz line
Of the 31.3m passengers in 2024, 9.9m (+8.78%) travelled on the Luxembourg-Esch-sur-Alzette-Rodange line, the busiest line on the network. 6.8m (+17.24%) took the Luxembourg-Ettelbruck-Troisvierges-Gouvy line and 5.9m passengers (+4.26%) took the famous Luxembourg-Thionville-Metz line.
On average, nine out of ten trains on the Luxembourg network are on time, with the group maintaining its target of achieving 92% punctuality. By line, the “most on-time” trains are those on the Luxembourg-Kleinbettingen-Arlon line, with 94.2% of trains on time or less than six minutes late on arrival. At the other end of the scale--and not surprisingly--14.1% of trains on the Luxembourg-Thionville-Metz line were six minutes or more late on arrival. This is still an improvement of 1.3 percentage points compared with 2023. This line also recorded the highest number of trains cancelled for their entire journey, at 3.1%. Again, this is an improvement, since the figure stood at 8.5% in 2023.
“As far as delays are concerned, we are of course very dependent on our neighbours, because we do have an exceptional situation,” concedes Wengler. “Almost half of the passenger traffic on our network is cross-border, and strikes, for example, are the main cause of our train cancellations, so it does have a major influence.”
Five hundred and three new hires were made in 2024, bringing the total workforce to 5,199 (versus 5,125 in 2023). Three hundred and forty departures were also recorded and 25,000 job applications were processed.
The full CFL Annual Report 2024 can be found here.
This article was originally published in French.
