After six years of transformative impact on Luxembourg's urban mobility, Luxtram is poised to further expand its tram network to connect key locations across the country and introduce a high-speed tram by 2025 says Luxtram director André Von der Marck.
In just six years, the tram has become an integral part of the capital's landscape. Infrastructure will continue expanding in 2024 and 2025, with the goal of eventually creating a network with high-speed trams that connect Luxembourg City to other hotspots in the country.
Our colleagues from RTL Infos recently spoke to Luxtram director André Von der Marck about the latest updates surrounding the ongoing mobility project.
Interview
After six years in operation, can we say that the tram has become indispensable?
"Six years ago, the Luxembourg tramway carried nobody. Now almost 100,000 people use it every day. The streetcar offers connections with trains, buses, and park-and-ride facilities, and more than 100,000 people use it every day to get to work, school, or the shops.
But, much more than that, when the city is celebrating, the streetcar is very present. On National Day, for example, we carry almost 150,000 passengers. Just as we enabled 600,000 people to get to the Schueberfouer."
The route will be extended at both ends, one of which will be rapidly accessible. Are you on schedule?
"Yes, we're absolutely on schedule so that by mid-2024, just a few months from now, the tram will be able to reach the big stadium and the Ban de Gasperich. It's an extension that's being built right now. We've already laid 85% of the tracks. And next summer we'll be opening this extremely important section, which will allow us to extend the existing route by a further 3.9 km.
We'll go all the way to Findel airport in early 2025, since work is already underway there too. The bridge over the motorway is already almost complete and work alongside it is currently underway. Work will be completed by the end of 2024. And at the very beginning of 2025, we'll be putting this additional 3.7 km extension into use with two new stations: one at the Héienhaff car park and another at the Findel terminus."
André Von der Marck, managing director of Luxtram, assured us that "85% of the rails" have already been laid on the last stretch of the network south of the capital, which is due to be operational by summer 2024.
In concrete terms, what will change for users at the start of 2025?
"First of all, the route will be completely finished and will be almost 16 km long. Compared with today, we'll have seven extra stations and we'll probably be welcoming 20,000 extra users every day. In all likelihood, we'll reach 120,000 passengers a day."
What extension projects are you currently working on?
"Luxtram is of course working on a number of extension projects, which are also known through the 2035 National Mobility Plan. Luxtram's two shareholders – the State and the City of Luxembourg – will be meeting in the next few weeks to decide on priorities. And I'm convinced that we'll have some pleasant surprises and some very good decisions in early 2024, in other words in a few weeks' time, on all these issues."
A high-speed tram was announced in mid-September. What steps are currently being taken on that front?
"The route, number of trains, and so on were announced a few weeks ago. This high-speed tram will run 2.5 times faster than the urban tram we know today. The first studies are likely to be launched in 2024 so that we can make very concrete progress on this absolutely essential project for Luxembourg's national tram network.
It's going to be a very complicated project, because it's a new concept with a high-speed tram that will have to be integrated into the urban tram network, with new, longer rolling wagons (the new trains will be 55 metres long), with additional comfort offered by more seats than the current tram, so there's still a lot of work to do."
