Freight transport approached last year's values, passenger transport exceeded last year's values by almost 10%

Freight transport showed year-on-year smaller volumes of transported goods in all components, however, the dynamics of the decline in both road and rail transport significantly eased. The number of passengers as well as transport distances in passenger transport rose compared to the corresponding period last year, but in June it was the slowest in 2023.

Within freight transport in June 2023, the SR companies transported 19 million tons of goods. This is the best result this year, despite the fact that the volumes of transported goods by road and rail have not yet reached last year's values. The overall decrease by 7.5% was influenced by the year-on-year drop by almost a third in other transport. This relatively small component of the industry has been fundamentally influencing the overall values of the transport and storage sector for months. More than two-thirds of the transported tons of goods represent long-term road transport, which recorded a decrease by 4.3% and rail transport by 2.5%.

Download high resolution chart format PDF (226 kB) or PNG (1,4 MB).

The second of the indicators characterizing transport - freight transport performance, which also takes into account transport distances, decreased by 10% year-on-year and reached almost 3 billion ton kilometers (tkm) in the sixth month. The decline was influenced by road transport with lower performance by 9.3%, within which mainly non-public freight transport dropped (it is carried out by non-transport companies, i.e. companies with a core business other than transport). Performances in other transport decreased by a third.

Passenger transport continued to be affected by positive developments in public transport

In June 2023, the number of passengers in passenger transport increased by 9.4% year-on-year and reached 58.8 million people. The crucial road transport rose at a double-digit rate year-on-year, while public transport mainly increased significantly (by more than a quarter year-on-year). Compared to the corresponding period last year, however, there was a lower number of passengers on trains, and rail transport recorded a decrease by 3.2% for the first time this year.

Passenger transport performance, taking into account the length of transport, were identical to the pre-pandemic values, reaching 921 million passenger kilometers and increased by 7.1% year-on-year. Transport performance rose exclusively by road, where it rose by 14.7%. The number of passenger kilometers by rail and other transport was approximately the same as a year ago.

Transportation and storage for the first half of 2023

In total for the first half of 2023, 104.6 million tons of goods were transported in freight transport, which represented a year-on-year decrease by 11.6%. 344.6 million passengers used the means of passenger transport, which represented a year-on-year growth by 15.8%. More passengers were transported by rail by 11.8% and by road by 16.3%.

The data for the first half of 2023 were revised and refined based on the results of a weekly survey in road freight transport, the results of which are attached to the information report.