More than all people in Europe carried in İstanbul

Though there was no new line, ridership was increased by 130 million in 2019. One reason is that new lines had reached full capacity. Another reason is that cities have started to use rail as backbone of city transport and reorganize buses in short distances connected to rail.

With this improvements, the ridership of 10 of 12 cities had reached to 1 billion 462 million pax. As in network length and fleet size, İstanbul is again on top of the list. 57% of all rail passengers traveled in İstanbul. Total number of passengers on rail of İstanbul in 2019 exceeds population of Europe.

Citizens of İzmir used most often

When we focus on how often the citizens use rail, top of the list changes. Connecting suburbs to city center with İzban, İzmir citizens travel 222 million times by rail last year. With a population of 3 million, each citizen had travelled 72 times by rail. İstanbul is second in the list with 54 travels per citizen. With is globally-awarder-tram-system, Eskişehir is 3rd on the list, before many bigger cities.

The population of city centers and suburbs that are connected by suburban trains are accounted in this analysis. The ratio of what we accounted over the whole population is 98% in İstanbul, 88% in Eskişehir whereas 56% in Antalya and 52% in Samsun.