As in previous years, the transport volume increased in all types of transport in 2018: National transport, accounting for 377 million tonnes and hence the lion’s share of the transport volume, rose by 2.6 per cent compared to 2017. International receipt (66.5 million tonnes) and dispatch (57.2 million tonnes) increased by 4 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. Transit transport (73.3 million tonnes) rose by 3.3 per cent compared to the previous year.
In 2018, the transport volume on Austrian roads carried by domestic and foreign road freight vehicles amounted to 574 million tonnes and increased by 3.1 per cent compared to 2017 (557 million tonnes), as Statistics Austria reports. With 51.9 billion domestic tonne-kilometres, the transport performance rose by 4.5 per cent in the reference year (2017: 49.6 billion tonne-kilometres).
More than two-thirds of the total transport volume (67.9 per cent or 389.5 million tonnes) was performed by Austrian road freight vehicles. While national transport was carried out primarily by Austrian vehicles (97.5 per cent or 367.6 million tonnes), the share of domestic road freight vehicles reached only 15.6 per cent in international receipt (10.3 million tonnes) and 18.6 per cent in international dispatch (10.6 million tonnes). To transit traffic, Austrian vehicles contributed only marginally with 1.3 per cent (1 million tonnes).
With 35.8 per cent (18.6 billion tonne-kilometres), the share of Austrian road freight vehicles in total transport performance was lower than in transport volume. This is mainly due to the longer journeys of foreign vehicles in transit transport. The 18 billion tonne-kilometres in transit transport, of which 99.4 per cent were achieved by foreign vehicles, accounted for more than a third of the total transport performance.
The transport volume of third countries (8.7 million tonnes) estimated from toll data accounted for 1.5 per cent of total transport volume and accounted for 1.9 billion tonne-kilometres or 3.7 per cent of total transport performance.
Transit traffic between Germany and Italy represented 18.4 million tonnes in 2018, more than a quarter of total transits (73.3 million tonnes) on Austria’s roads. As in previous years, Germany was by far the most important dispatch country for goods received in Austria in 2018, with a transport volume of 26.3 million t and a transport capacity of 2.7 billion tkm. This was followed by the Czech Republic (8.3 million tonnes or 1 billion tkm), Italy (7.1 million t or 1 billion tkm), Hungary (6.3 million tonnes or 0.8 billion tkm), Slovenia (3.5 million t 0.5 billion tkm), Slovakia (2.6 million t or 0.4 billion tkm) and Poland (2 million t 0.4 billion tkm).
With a transport volume of 19.7 million t or a transport capacity of 2.2 billion tkm, Germany was also the most important receiving country for goods shipped from Austria in road traffic, followed by Italy (9 million t or 1.3 billion tkm), Hungary (5.7 million t or 0.8 billion tkm), the Czech Republic (5.5 million t 0.6 billion tkm), Slovenia (2.6 million t 0.5 billion tkm), Slovakia (2.2 million t or 0.4 billion tkm), Switzerland and Liechtenstein (2 million t 0.2 billion tkm) and Poland (1.7 million t and 0.3 billion tkm).
Looking only at foreign road haulage vehicles on Austrian roads, the highest transport volume (28.6 million t) was carried by vehicles registered in Hungary in 2018. The most transport services in Germany were provided by 5.4 billion tkm of vehicles registered in Poland.
