Malaga metro overtakes Seville for passenger numbers making it the most used in Andalucía

In August, the city's recently-extended transport system took the lead, ahead of the Andalusian capital

Ignacio Lillo

Malaga

Friday, 20 October 2023, 11:14

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For the first time in its still short history, the Malaga metro has overtaken all those in Andalucía (Seville, Granada and Bahía de Cádiz) and has become, at least for one month, the most used metro in the region. The arrival of the transport system to Malaga’s historic city centre last March, together with the annual fair and the good tourist year are behind these figures.

The latest passenger data from Spain's INE national statistics institute show that in August the Malaga transport system was the most used in the region, with some 980,000 passengers. This allowed it to overtake Seville for the first time, which, until now, was always the regional metro with the most passengers; in August it had 821,000 users. As for Granada, it had a total of 705,891 users in August.

In Malaga the number of passengers has practically doubled month after month with the arrival of trains to the Alameda Principal and Avenida de Andalucía in the city centre. The figures underline that, unlike other regional cities, this transport system hardly suffers from seasonality, since the summer absence of students and some workers is compensated by events such as the Malaga fair and by tourists.

In July, the Malaga suburban network was almost equal to that of Seville, although the latter still had more users (1,011,000 compared to 1,060,000), according to the data contained in the INE report. But Seville's was far higher in all the previous months, with a peak during Easter Week, when numbers for the Andalusian capital were exactly twice as high as for Malaga (1,298,000 compared to 2,628,000).

Nevertheless, since the opening of the Guadalmedina and Atarazanas stations in the city centre, Malaga has broken records every month. Pending the September results, which are expected to be historic, the best so far was in April with almost 1.3 million passengers and a daily average of more than 43,000 users. This represents a growth of 123% compared to the same period in 2022. The same trend continued in May, with 1,196,000 users; and in June there were 1,116,000. July still remained above one million passengers, and August remained close to this psychological barrier.

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