The number of people in passenger transport increased, at the beginning of 2024 their number exceeded even the pre-pandemic values

Passenger transport increased year-on-year by more than 5% in the first quarter, exceeding the pre-pandemic numbers by one percent. The number of people in urban transport reached by a fifth more than in 2019. Freight transport rose in both volume and performance, mainly affected by road transport. Higher volumes of goods transported by rail also exceeded the values of 2019.

In the 1st quarter of 2024, the number of people in passenger transport increased year-on-year by 5.3% and reached 178.7 million transported persons. Compared to the pre-pandemic 1st quarter of 2019, the values were higher by 1%. Decisive road transport, mostly public transport reached a year-on-year growth. Almost 117 million passengers were transported by public transport, which represented a year-on-year increase of 9%. Compared to the pre-pandemic values of 2019, the number of passengers was higher by more than 20%. Rail transport also recorded a slight increase in the number of transported persons, 17.3 million people used it in the 1st quarter, which was by 1% more year-on-year.

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In the 1st quarter of 2024, passenger transport performance, which also takes into account the length of the roads, reached 2.3 billion passenger kilometres and were higher than last year by 7%. Higher performance in road transport was mainly supported by growth in other road transport by 11.5%, which includes travel by bus or other means of transport.

The volume of freight transport increased slightly compared to last year

The volume of freight transport for the first 3 months of 2024 almost increased year-on-year by 2%. In total, 50.2 million tons of goods were transported by freight transport. Year-on-year increases were supported by better results in road transport, mostly in public transport, which grew by 11.3% compared to last year. In contrast, non-public transport decreased year-on-year by 4.8%. Rail freight transport carried year-on-year more goods by 5.3%, while the volume of goods transported exceeded pre-pandemic values by 3%. Other freight transport, which includes water, air, pipeline, warehouse and auxiliary activities, recorded lower values by 5.1% in the 1st quarter than last year.

In the 1st quarter of 2024, freight transport performance, taking into account the transport distance, reached 10.4 billion ton kilometres (tkm). They thus recorded an increase of 11.8% year-on-year. The higher year-on-year growth was mainly influenced by performance in road transport, which increased by 15.1%. Higher performances were reached by railway transport, after seven quarters of declines, they increased year-on-year by 3.1%.