Traffic trends among UIC member companies in 2021

        Monthly data for 2019, 2020 and 2021 provided by passenger and freight operators, all members of UIC, shows that the improvement in rail transport conditions continues but still slowly, especially for passenger transport for which traffic has not yet returned to 2019 levels. For freight traffic, after a marked decrease in 2020 in Europe and the United States, the trend is positive but weak in 2021, while growth is gradual and more sustained over the three years for some major Asian and African companies .

        Rail passenger traffic (passenger-kilometres) has shown a general recovery since the beginning of 2021. Indeed, after an increase over June to August 2020 and then a slowdown during the last quarter 2020, traffic is on the rise again for the majority of companies. Thus in 2021, 33 companies (out of 44) showed a recovery in traffic compared to 2020, examples being CR (China, +17%), IR (India, +10%), SNCF (France, +34%), RENFE (Spain, +41%), AMTRAK (USA, +62%) and +89% on average for African companies, which had recorded a very strong slowdown in 2020 traffic. Unfortunately, for some passenger operators (i.e. 11 out of 44), traffic was lower during 2021 than 2020, especially for East Japan Railways at -6%, companies in Chinese Taipei (i.e. Taiwan) with an average of -24%, for DSVN (Vietnam, -60%), KTM (Malaysia, -55%) and DB-AG (Germany, -3%). In Southeast Asia and Japan, the impact of the pandemic on passenger traffic was stronger in 2021 than in 2020, contrary to the rest of the world.

        The monthly data for transport of goods by rail shows that, on average, traffic was negatively impacted during the first half of 2020 and that there was then a more or less rapid recovery, depending on the company. For some companies, the impact was insignificant leading to steady growth over the three years. Indeed, it is noted that some African companies, such as SNCC (Democratic Republic of Congo), SNTF (Algeria) and SETRAG (Gabon) have recorded regular growth resulting in a difference ranging from +20 to +40% between 2019 and 2021. The same trends are also found for some Asian companies such as DSVN (Vietnam, +12% between 2019 and 2021), KTZ (Kazakhstan, +4%), Indian Railways (+14%) and China Railways (+5%).

        In Europe, results are contrasted with, for example, TCDD (Turkey, 2021 vs 2019 = +10%), SBB (Switzerland, +5%), SNCF (France, +11%), VR (Finland, +2) and ZSSK Cargo (Slovakia, +5) which show higher freight traffic in 2021 than in 2019. For most member companies based in the EU-27, traffic was better in 2021 than in 2020 but has not yet reached 2019 levels, this is the case for DB-AG (Germany), PKP (Poland), FSI (Italy) and LG (Lithuania) for example. The same trend is shown for goods transport in the US, with better results in 2021 compared to 2020 but not as high as in 2019.