Trains are stopping. Recruitment is continuing. In the meantime, a new app is offering cross-border commuters the chance to car-share.
From 16 July until 23 August 2026 inclusive, there will be no trains running between Thionville and Luxembourg. CFL has put in place several replacement bus services, with additional departures during peak hours. They are asking passengers to allow for an extra 45 minutes or so due to unpredictable road traffic conditions. The alternative transport option is therefore subject to the same traffic jams as motorists.
It is in this market segment that Luxcov is seeking to establish itself. Launched in May 2026 by Martin Stoz, the platform focuses on regular journeys between cross-border workers’ homes and their places of work in Luxembourg. It is free for individuals and does not charge a commission on any contribution paid to the driver. Figures published directly on Luxcov show around 100 users and approximately 30 journeys on offer. These figures, which are subject to change, reflect the platform’s early stages. They also highlight how far there is still to go, given that there are 233,000 employees living outside Luxembourg.
Another app
Luxcov is not starting from scratch. CoPilote, BlaBlaCar Daily, Karos and Mobicoop already offer, or have offered, similar solutions for commuting. Platforms are changing, merging or repositioning themselves. The promise remains the same: to make use of empty seats in cars that are already on the road.
The problem isn’t the number of available seats. It’s about reconciling three constraints. Passengers must be travelling from the same area, working at the same place or nearby, and have working hours that are close enough to one another. Picking up a child, a meeting running over, an unexpected errand or a day working from home can be enough to throw the arrangements into disarray. A driver travelling alone pays more. But they retain the freedom to set off whenever they wish, to change their route and to return home without having to rely on a colleague or a stranger. An app makes it easier to organise a lift. It does not eliminate the practical cost of carpooling: the sacrifice of some of that autonomy.
The scale of the problem is evident from the figures provided by the Department of Bridges and Roads. In 2025, on an average working day, the ten selected road crossings between France and Luxembourg recorded around 36,000 private cars heading for the Grand Duchy between 5am and 10am. In the opposite direction, nearly 39,000 crossings were recorded between 3pm and 8pm. The A3 alone accounts for the majority of this traffic: around 10,600 cars heading for Luxembourg during the morning rush hour and 13,400 heading for France during the evening rush hour. Following this are, in particular, the B40 at Belvaux, the CR184 at Dudelange, the N3 at Frisange, the N4 at Esch-sur-Alzette and the N5 at Rodange. A platform displaying around thirty journeys therefore corresponds to several tens of thousands of vehicle journeys per day.
47 new French cross-border workers per week
Luxcov also faces the classic problem faced by platforms. With around 36,000 vehicles crossing the French borders each morning, it currently offers only around 30 journeys spread across France, Belgium and Germany.
At the end of 2025, Luxembourg had nearly 494,000 employees. Cross-border workers accounted for 47 per cent of this figure, according to Statec. The country therefore remains in a situation where almost one in two employees has to cross a border to get to work, unless they are working from home or do not need to be on site. The trend from France is particularly significant. In 2025, 126,600 employees working in Luxembourg were resident in France, compared with 124,160 a year earlier. This represents an increase of 2,440 cross-border workers in one year, or a rise of 2 per cent. This increase is equivalent to nearly 47 new French cross-border workers per week.
This annual increase may seem modest compared with the 126,600 French cross-border commuters already recorded. It is, however, enough to fuel traffic. Taking, by way of illustration, the figures recorded in 2017 – 73 per cent of commutes were made by car, with around 1.2 people per vehicle – the 2,440 additional workers could represent nearly 1,500 more cars on a day when everyone is travelling to work.
This is not an actual count. Working from home, holidays, staggered working hours, travelling by train, bus and car-sharing all reduce this figure. Nor does the calculation take into account any changes in behaviour since 2017. It does, however, illustrate the mechanism: even before reducing traffic, new practices must first absorb the journeys generated by new recruitment.
Cars can therefore be slightly fuller, whilst their total number continues to rise. Car-sharing is not just a response to solo car journeys; it is also a response to the growth in cross-border employment.
A new traffic lane, speed cameras… to save four minutes
The authorities have introduced a tangible incentive to encourage car-sharing. Since March 2025, cars carrying at least two people have been allowed to use the dedicated lane on the A3, just like buses. An initial assessment estimated the average time saving at around four minutes when travelling to Luxembourg during the morning rush hour and five minutes when travelling to France in the evening. However, these time savings apply to a distance of four kilometres in one direction and 2.1 kilometres in the other, according to the assessment carried out last autumn.
Luxmobil 2025 is specifically designed to provide an updated picture of the situation. The survey was launched to assess the impact of free public transport, the expansion of the tram network, the reorganisation of bus services, new park-and-ride facilities and remote working. It follows on from a study carried out in 2017, before the pandemic and before the widespread adoption of hybrid working. Its cross-border component is based on several surveys: the journeys of French cross-border workers are covered by the EMC² survey in northern Lorraine, whilst Luxmobil specifically focuses on cross-border workers from Belgium and Germany. The results will then be collated to produce a coherent picture of travel patterns around Luxembourg. As of 3 August, the official portal lists Luxmobil 2025 as completed, but has still not published the results. Luxembourg therefore still does not know whether car occupancy rates have increased, whether remote working has permanently eliminated certain journeys, or whether investment in public transport has reduced dependence on cars.
The suspension of TER services between Thionville and Luxembourg will provide a particular test. The figures may show whether more vehicles crossed the border during those five weeks. However, they will not be able to attribute any such increase to rail travel, cross-border recruitment or summer traffic. The comparison will need to be based on the same crossing points, the same times and the same days of the week.
