Passenger traffic on railways is growing, while rail freight transport is in decline

Anton Kardakov, leading analyst at Statistics Estonia, said that the number of rail passengers in the Baltic countries has increased in recent years. “This increase is likely to continue thanks to the new trains and more frequent train services. On the other hand, freight transport by rail is in decline,” added Kardakov.

The first new trains arrived in 2013, and the number of passengers started to rise steadily, peaking at 8.4 million in 2019. The number of passengers fell during the coronavirus pandemic but has shown a positive trend in the post-pandemic years. There were 7.7 million rail passengers in Estonia last year.

In 2025, the passenger traffic volume in Estonia was 342.4 million passenger-kilometres – down by 10% from the year before. The highest passenger traffic volume was recorded in 2018, when it was over 416 million passenger-kilometres.

Last year, Estonia ranked second among the Baltic countries based on the number of rail passengers. Latvia ranked first with 21.4 million rail passengers. Lithuania followed Estonia with 5.4 million passengers. This means that, in 2025, there were 34.5 million passengers carried by rail in the Baltic countries. For comparison, the same number in Finland was 89.7 million.

The decline in freight turnover continued in the third quarter of this year

Kardakov explained that rail freight volume must be carefully estimated, since freight quantities in tonnes may be reported twice. “In domestic rail freight traffic, it is possible that the same quantity of goods is carried by several enterprises, for example, on public railway by one carrier and on non-public railway by another carrier. For this reason, it is preferable to describe freight volume using freight turnover which shows the volume of work in rail freight transport in tonne-kilometres,” said Kardakov.

Rail freight turnover was 485 million tonne-kilometres last year, which is 17% less than the year before. Freight turnover has shown a similar decline in Latvia and Lithuania – in 2025, it was 2,849 million tonne-kilometres in Latvia and 5,552 million tonne-kilometres in Lithuania, down by 19% and 6%, respectively, from 2024.

In the third quarter of this year, rail freight turnover in Estonia was 91 million tonne-kilometres, which is 9% less than in the third quarter of last year.

Data as at 3 November 2026 are published. The indicator values may change if there are any revisions made in the data sources after this date.

See also the transport section on our website. More detailed data have been published in the statistical database.

When using Statistics Estonia’s data and graphs, please indicate the source.

For further information:

Annaliisa Köss
Media Relations Partner
Marketing and Dissemination Department
Statistics Estonia
Tel +372 5696 6484
press [at] stat.ee

Photo: Shutterstock