For the 100th anniversary ÖBB passenger record awaits

2023-04-21 08:49:24

Already in 2022 there was a record with 42 million passengers in long-distance traffic. A total of almost 447 million people took the train or Postbus last year – 38 percent more than in 2021. ÖBB wants to break the previous record of 477 million passengers in 2019 this year.

“Train travel is very trendy and that is also reflected in the numbers. For 2023, the 100th year of our existence, we expect over 480 million passengers and thus a new passenger record,” said Matthä, even if it was a little weaker this year result is calculated. In the previous year, ÖBB achieved earnings before taxes of 193 million euros, after 170 million euros in 2021.

As early as 2022, passenger transport was the group’s earnings driver with 158 million euros. In local rail transport, ÖBB transported 29 percent more passengers, at 210.7 million, and 41.8 million passengers in long-distance traffic – this corresponds to an increase of 71 percent. With 194.4 million passengers, ÖBB recorded an increase of 44 percent in bus transport. Matthä attributed this to tourism on the one hand and to the total of 200,000 climate tickets sold by the end of 2022 on the other.

Minus point for punctuality

The only drop of bitterness: The ÖBB lost something in terms of punctuality. In the overall system, it was 95.5 percent, after 96.7 percent in the previous year.

The rail freight transport of the ÖBB Rail Cargo Group had to contend with several problems in the previous year: in addition to the Ukraine crisis, there were massively rising energy prices, lower production, material and delivery bottlenecks and numerous construction sites in Europe as well as incidents. At 88 million tons, transport performance declined slightly, but sales rose slightly by 3 percent to almost 2 billion euros.

In the previous year, ÖBB infrastructure recorded a minus of 15.7 million euros, which is primarily due to the sharp rise in energy prices. However, the train kilometers traveled increased by 5 percent to 163.8 million kilometers.

In the previous year, ÖBB invested around 3.9 billion euros, with the largest share going into the rail infrastructure. The modernization of train stations and Park & Ride facilities as well as investments in power plants and photovoltaic and wind power plants were further ÖBB projects.