“A total of 8.6 million tonnes of goods was hauled as freight transport on the Austrian section of the Danube in the year 2015”, according to Statistics Austria. Compared to 2014, this was a decrease of 1.5 million tonnes or -15 percent.
This can be attributed, among others, to the low precipitation weather conditions and hence the low water levels. On the Austrian section of the Danube the water levels fell below the low water regulation level on 54 days (15 percent of the year; 2014 it was 2 percent of the year).
The total transport performance (i.e. the product of transport volume and distance) was 8.3 billion tonne-kilometres (tkm), or 16 percent lower than in 2014. Around 1.8 billion tkm (-17.1%) of this transport performance took place on the Austrian section of the Danube.
The number of laden journeys decreased from 9,706 to 8,658 (-10.8%).
The individual transport segments of inland shipping showed declines in transit traffic as well as for international goods receipt. For transit through Austria a drop of 20.8 percent to1.8 million tonnes was reported. The international goods receipt decreased by 13.2 percent or 0.7 million tonnes to 4.3 million tonnes.
The inland transport, which is less significant in terms of volume, was reduced by 14.8 percent to 0.7 million tonnes in the reference year.
