Nine years after the first platform at the Howald stop, tucked behind the sprawling Cactus car park, entered service, and following more than a decade of construction work, the new suburban station south of the capital is now an integral part of the brand-new Howald multimodal exchange hub.
It is a place where buses, trams, trains, cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists parking at the nearby Park & Ride facility all come together seamlessly along dedicated lanes and tracks.
The mobility of tomorrow, Marc Wengler, CEO of CFL, declared with pride on Wednesday, was already a reality today in Howald, as Mobility Minister Yuriko Backes cut the ribbon to inaugurate the new multimodal exchange hub.
Thanks to seamless connections that allow users to switch between modes of transport by walking just a few dozen metres, this new hub, Backes said, "makes daily commuting easier and boosts the country's appeal".
The infrastructure, she explained, would "connect people and regions more effectively" and "improve the quality of life", both for residents of the emerging neighbourhoods close by, including Ban de Gasperich, Cloche d'Or, and Howald – and of course for cross-border commuters travelling into Luxembourg for work.
The Howald suburban station handles an average of four trains an hour in both directions on the Luxembourg–Esch/Alzette–Rodange line, and two an hour in both directions on the Sillon Lorrain line.
Nearly 3,000 passengers already pass through the station every day, with its two platforms and four tracks designed to handle up to 10,000.
This is also the route that will be taken, in less than 12 months, by trains serving the future double-track Luxembourg–Bettembourg railway line.
Described by Wengler as a "showcase for the mobility of the future", the new Howald hub is a concrete example of the multimodal approach that policymakers have long championed as the solution for easing traffic flow in a country where motorways are regularly congested at rush hour.
It also shows the level of comfort the public authorities can offer users to encourage them to travel by train, tram, or bus in pleasant conditions.
In practical terms, that comfort takes the shape of canopies to protect passengers from the rain, shelters that are heated in winter, and escalators and lifts to make the platforms accessible for everyone.
There is also another, more unexpected comfort feature. The platforms, Wengler explained, were considerably longer than standard ones, going beyond the 250 metres required to accommodate three-unit train sets.
While not yet a common sight on the network, these trains could carry nearly 1,000 people, he noted, referring to the new Coradia Stream High Capacity trains. In short: more seats, greater comfort.
The new transport hub illustrates the broader concept that the CFL is slowly rolling out across Luxembourg's entire railway network.
In practical terms, that means reshaping the infrastructure "to separate the operations of the six main lines converging on Luxembourg City", Wengler explained.
In other words, these lines will no longer cross paths in future, and disruptions on one line will no longer spill over onto another, something that still happens today, in particular at Luxembourg Gare station.
For the CFL, Howald "is a crucial piece of the puzzle for realising this concept", Wengler said.
The Luxembourg–Bettembourg section has long been a notorious bottleneck, and with good reason: two major lines intersect there, the Esch–Bettembourg–Luxembourg line, which carries the highest number of passengers, and the Metz–Thionville–Bettembourg–Luxembourg line.
When the new Luxembourg–Bettembourg line opens in September 2027, Wengler said, there would be a doubling of capacity, and the two lines would no longer cross paths.
That, he added, was a truly major development, not just for capacity thanks to the additional lines, but also for quality, particularly when it came to timetable reliability.
Commuters arriving from Metz and Thionville will pull in at one platform at the new Howald station, while those coming from Esch will use another.
Following the inauguration of the Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg multimodal hub and its funicular in late 2017, and the opening of the exemplary new Howald hub on 7 October 2026, the CFL is now preparing to launch construction on a third future peripheral multimodal hub in Hollerich.
The site will likewise serve as a convergence point for buses, trams, trains and bicycles, another small stop destined for a much larger role in time.
The works will be "starting in 2027" and could wrap up "by 2032 or later", a cautious assessment from Wengler, who knows all too well the importance of being on time.
