The train is not just for going to work. It's a no-brainer, but for many years some Rodalies lines where it's totally impossible to sit down during the week, then they were rather empty on Saturday. The trend is changing and weekends are increasingly in demand.
So much so that Renfe has registered figures never seen before: the number of passengers on weekends and holidays in the month of June was 30% higher than that of the same month last year and is already well above the levels prior to the pandemic. Saturdays in June had 12% more than in 2019 and Sundays and holidays, 23%.
The recurring subscription that allows free travel in the six areas that make up the Rodalies de Catalunya network, as well as on regional trains, is a fundamental element that explains this growth, according to Renfe sources. There are those who took it off to go to work and now also use it to go to the beach, and then there are those who have purchased it directly for leisure trips.
The good news of the increase in demand at the weekend can become a double-edged sword for Renfe, which can find itself with large crowds that are impossible to be absorbed by the offer of the Maresme line. Both the R1 and the Garraf line (R2) are reinforced on summer weekends. In the case of Maresme with more trains at rush hour on the beach and in Garraf with the addition of the Platja de Castelldefels station to the route of 17 trains that bypass this stop during the rest of the year.
However, the bulk of travelers continue to use public transport during the week. In the first half of 2023, the demand for 2019 in Rodalies has almost equaled. The 64.1 million validations registered during the first six months of the year are 23% more than last year and almost 99% of the travelers that there were before the pandemic. There are even peaks in which the number of passengers is already higher. This is the case of June, when 6% more travelers were counted than in June 2019, a milestone that also occurred in December of last year, when Renfe celebrated having exceeded the pre-pandemic figures for the first time.
Of all those forecasts that were made in 2020 about a reduction in travel, very little has remained, but in Renfe they have detected the effects of the small number of employees who have managed to implement partial teleworking in their offices. It must be taken into account that if a person stays at home for a day, he makes 20% fewer trips than before. Otherwise, the pre-pandemic level in Renfe would be far exceeded, a challenge shared by all public transport operators. In this sense, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) has broken the passenger record this year both on weekdays and holidays, in this case the day of Sant Jordi, which fell on a Sunday.
