SPAIN: Trenitalia-backed high speed operator Iryo carried 5·2 million passengers at an average load factor of more than 65% in its first year of operation.
Reviewing performance since its first train ran between Madrid and Valencia on November 25 2022, the company said at an event in the Spanish capital on November 23 that it had run 16 851 scheduled services to date.
Average load factor was 66%, with 70% being achieved on services between Madrid and Sevilla/Málaga, a corridor over which it runs 11 return trains per day. Its fleet of 20 Frecciarossa trains covered 9 million km during the first year.
’One year after our start-up of services in Spain, the hard work put in by our employees, who now number more than 583, is bearing fruit’, commented CEO Simone Gorini. ‘Not only have we managed to establish a company offering high speed train services to 11 cities, we have also attained our chief objective, which is offering our clients a quality service at competitive fares, so that they can enjoy their journeys. Looking to the future, we are now entering a phase during which the liberalisation of rail passenger services will firmly establish itself in Spain.’
The liberalisation is already having a positive effect on usage of high speed rail services. According to data from the national competition authority, during Q2 2023, 8·3 million journeys were made on those high speed lines where there were two or more operators competing for traffic. On the Madrid to Barcelona route, train occupancy levels averaged 95% while on that between Madrid and Sevilla/Málaga the average occupancy was 85%.
Infrastructure manager ADIF has suggested that in the first 10 months of 2023, ridership on the high speed network increased by 10·7% over the same period in 2022. Part of this can be attributed to competing operators offering lower fares. Iryo’s average fares vary between €22 and €26 for a single journey between Madrid and València, and €40-€47 between Madrid and Barcelona.
