Renfe Cercanías Madrid experienced significant growth in 2024, carrying 241.7 million users, 5.1% more than in 2023.
Spain’s public operator attributes this growth to a series of actions implemented since October to improve service quality and reduce disruption.
Improvements included increased train availability and reinforced maintenance operations, significantly decreasing missed runs from 1.18% in October 2024 to 0.33% in January 2025.
Service regularity (maintaining scheduled frequencies) also improved due to these actions. Renfe indicates that regular circulations reached 84.8% in January 2025 compared to 80.7% in December 2024. As a result, the last four-month period saw an 8.6% increase in passengers.
In addition to the measures adopted, Renfe will begin to reinforce and renew the Cercanías Madrid rolling stock with new units of the 452 and 453 series, which offer 20% more capacity than the Civia 465 trains.
Finally, Renfe indicates that it has executed 805.5 million euros of its part of the Madrid Cercanías Plan between 2018 and 2024, including improvements in stations, car parks and information systems.