MANY MINDEDArgentina’s solar train has carried 90,000 people
90K passengers · rode a battery-electric solar-charged train on the 42 km Volcan-Tilcara route · installedmeasured · Electrek, 2026-08-03 — Source states "more than 90,000 passengers transported in the last two years", about a third under the operator's social responsibility programme. A cumulative two-year floor, not a rate. Annual null:
The Tren Solar de la Quebrada, described as Latin America's first primarily solar-powered passenger train, passed its second anniversary last month and has carried around 90,000 passengers since its official launch, Electrek reported on 3 August 2026.
The service runs on a 42-kilometre restored branch line through the Quebrada de Humahuaca in Argentina's Jujuy province — a canyon UNESCO recognised in 2003 as a trade and migration corridor in continuous use for more than 10,000 years. The train carries up to 388 passengers, 72 of them seated, on a 352 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. Regenerative braking on the downhill sections means the roughly 52-mile round trip is completed on a single charge. Each of the six stations on the route has EV-style charging, supplied from a dedicated 6 MW solar farm backed by stationary storage. There is no combustion anywhere in the system.
The economics are the interesting part. A rail line whose fuel is a solar farm it owns has a marginal cost per passenger-kilometre close to zero once built, which is the condition under which a service can be given away rather than sold. The operator appears to be using that: of the roughly 90,000 passengers carried in the last two years, about one in three travelled through a social responsibility programme intended to bring the train within reach of the surrounding communities.
Phase 1 currently runs between Volcán and Tilcara. The stated long-term plan extends the route north to Humahuaca and eventually to La Quiaca near the Bolivian border, with no published timeline. Ridership and technical figures come from the operator's own materials rather than an independent audit, and no fare or operating-cost data is given.
Source: Electrek