Freight Transport

In 2003, 515 million tonnes of freight were carried in Austria – 175 kilogramme a day for every man, woman and child in the country. More than two killogramme of freight are transported for every Euro of Austria's gross domestic product (GDP).

Of these 515 million tonnes of freight carried in Austria, 361million tonnes went by road, 81 million tonnes by rail, and the rest was carried on the Danube or in pipelines.

Transport performance (= tonnage carried multiplied by distance) was 64 000 million tonne-kilometres, road transport accounting for 30 000 million tonne-kilometres of this.

In the last five years rail transport grew faster than road transport, though movements by rail in 2003 were slightly down on 2002. Compared with other Member States of the European Union (EU), Austria's road transport accounts for a small proportion of overall transport.

Supplementary model calculations

This information was processed by the Federal Ministry from a variety of data sources. Official national statistics are not currently able to give a comprehensive picture of freight transport (no complete data on foreign-registered HGVs), so the Ministry uses supplementary model calculations.