Portugal's Trains Carried 3.7 Million More Passengers This Spring While the Lisbon Metro Shed Its Third Quarter in a Row

Portugal's railways picked up 3.7 million more passengers between April and June than they did a year earlier. Its three metro systems lost 708,000. Both numbers come from the same release, the quarterly transport activity statistics published on Tuesday by the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (Statistics Portugal), and together they describe a country travelling further by train while its underground networks pull in opposite directions.

Trains carried 62.9 million passengers in the second quarter, up 6.2 percent, after a quarter that managed only 0.8 percent. The growth sits in the longer journeys. Interurban traffic reached 11.3 million passengers, a rise of 15.6 percent, having already grown 6.9 percent in the first quarter. Suburban services, which carry 81.9 percent of all rail passengers, went from a slight fall to a 4.4 percent rise, at 51.5 million. Measured in passenger-kilometres rather than tickets, the rail total is up 9.9 percent and interurban passenger-kilometres are up 14.5 percent, which means people are not simply travelling more often but travelling further when they do. The one rail category still shrinking is international, at 24,000 passengers and down 7.0 percent.

Lisbon Down, Porto Up

Metro de Lisboa moved 42.4 million passengers, down 4.4 percent, its third consecutive year-on-year fall. Metro do Porto moved 25.4 million, up 4.8 percent, after a first quarter that grew only 0.8 percent. Metro Sul do Tejo carried 5.2 million, up 1.3 percent. Across all three the total was 73.0 million, down 1.0 percent.

Lisbon's decline is steeper when measured properly. Its passenger-kilometres fell 6.1 percent, faster than its passenger count, while the seat-kilometres it put on offer fell only 1.7 percent: the service did not shrink anywhere near as much as demand for it. Porto's network now runs at the highest occupancy of the three, 23.8 percent, above Lisbon's 23.3 percent and well above Metro Sul do Tejo's 15.3 percent. Porto has spent the year handing out free travel cards well beyond the numbers its own model assumed, and ridership is catching up with that.

Air Travel Grows Abroad and Shrinks at Home

National airports handled 20.8 million passengers, up 1.5 percent, a marked slowdown from 3.9 percent in the first quarter and a continuation of the flattening that showed up when June produced the first monthly fall in six months. The headline conceals a split: international traffic rose 2.7 percent to 17.3 million and now accounts for 83.2 percent of the total, while domestic traffic fell 3.9 percent.

Lisbon, which alone handles 46.0 percent of national traffic, was flat at 9.6 million, a fall of 0.2 percent, with domestic passengers down 4.7 percent. Porto grew 6.1 percent to just under 5 million and Faro 4.3 percent to 3.5 million. The Azores went the other way almost everywhere: Ponta Delgada fell 12.9 percent to 704,450 passengers, Lajes 9.1 percent and São Jorge 8.3 percent. River services were flat, at 6.2 million passengers and a rise of 0.4 percent.

On freight, road haulage fell 3.6 percent to 27.7 million tonnes and rail 2.2 percent, while the ports gained 5.0 percent and air cargo 1.0 percent.

All second-quarter figures are preliminary, and the quarter predates two changes due in the next one: the 20 euro green rail pass reaching Lisbon and Porto commuter trains this month, and the transfer of rail safety oversight to the transport regulator on 1 October under the unpicking of the merger that created the IMT. Our guide to subscribing to the Passe Navegante covers the tiers in the meantime.