March the 17th, 2025 – A significant increase in passengers for Croatian trains as one million more people had travelled on the country’s tracks by the fourth quarter of 2024.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, a marked increase as 7.5 million passengers had used Croatian trains by the the fourth quarter of 2024. That figure is representative of one million (14.2%) more than in the same period back in 2023. The sum is also equal to approximately two million more than in the third quarter of last year, according to data from the Croatian Regulatory Agency for Network Industries (HAKOM). It’s worth noting that all passengers using Croatian trains are transported solely by HŽ Passenger Transport (Putnički prijevoz).
In addition to the encouraging increase in the number of passengers using Croatian trains, in the last quarter of 2024, the country’s railways also recorded a 51.2% increase in kilometres those passengers travelled. That amount ended up reaching 391 million kilometres. That alone also indicates more passengers travelling along longer routes and an increase in passenger demand for this form of transport.
In contrast, 3.3 million tonnes of goods were transported by Croatian trains, which is 16.1% less than in the last quarter of 2023, when there were almost four million tonnes of goods transported. The figure is also less than what was recorded back during the third quarter of 2024, when 3.8 million tonnes were transported by rail.
HAKOM explained this decline mainly by citing the interruption of rail traffic from the port of Ploče in Dalmatia to neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina. That was largely owing to the major floods and damage to the railway lines in Jablanica back in October 2024. Owing to that, it has been reported that 0.9 percent fewer tonne-kilometres were realised in freight transport by rail.
Although there were fewer goods transported by rail, rail freight carriers’ revenues in the fourth quarter of 2024 increased by 2.1 percent compared to the same period in 2023.
