Tram to the Airport: Line 1 Pushes Ridership Past 31 Million — But the Cars Are Still Winning

On 2 March 2025, the last segment of Luxembourg's Tram Line 1 opened, taking the route from the depot at the edge of Kirchberg eastward through Senningerberg to its new terminus at Luxembourg Airport (Findel). With that 16-kilometre line now operating end to end, the tram has become the spine of the capital's public transport network — and a working test of whether free public transport can change commuting behaviour at scale.

The numbers

Ridership has climbed from 6 million annual passengers shortly after the tram's relaunch to more than 31 million by 2024. That's a five-fold increase in a country of roughly 670,000 inhabitants, and it places the Luxembourg tram among the most intensively used per capita in Europe.

The airport extension is a particular win. Visitors arriving at Findel can now board the tram and reach the city centre, the European institutions in Kirchberg, the central station and the Cloche d'Or business district without buying a ticket — public transport across Luxembourg has been free for residents and visitors alike since 2020.

Free transport, mixed results

The headline-friendly fact remains: Luxembourg was the first country in the world to make all public transport free nationwide. The harder fact is that, six years on, around 70% of work commutes are still made by car. The free-fare policy has clearly grown ridership and shifted some marginal trips, but it has not, on its own, broken the structural incentive to drive — particularly for the tens of thousands of cross-border commuters from France, Belgium and Germany who feed Luxembourg's labour market every day.

What's next

The state has presented plans for an additional tramline running alongside the A4 motorway toward Esch-sur-Alzette, the country's second city, by 2028, with a further extension to the Belval quarter — home to the University of Luxembourg's main campus — by 2035. If those projects deliver on time, Luxembourg will have something close to a national tram network, an unusual achievement at this scale.

The honest take

The tram is, by most reasonable measures, a success: more passengers, fewer barriers, a real link between the airport and the city. But the lesson of the last five years is that infrastructure and free fares are necessary, not sufficient. Cracking car dependency in a country built around it will require harder choices on parking, road pricing and cross-border coordination — choices Luxembourg has so far been content to defer.