Transport Statistics from AHA

With the exception of a few US sites with US data (Wendell Cox and the FTA), there seems to be a lack of useful Transport Statistics on the Internet - if you know differently perhaps you would like to tell us. AHA plan to rectify this situation in the near future.

To whet your appetite, there follows the edited text of a posting by AHA to the Usenet Newsgroups alt.planning.urban and misc.transport.urban-transit. They are mainly from "Transport Statistics 1995", published in London by Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO). (A 1996 version has also been published.)

The following presents some international comparisons of passenger volume by mode and modal share in 1983 and 1993, and in particular the average annual growth (compound) between those dates. The data covers W. Europe, US and Japan. Data for E. Europe is very patchy.

There are one or two problems with the data - I'm not currently sure whether the German figures compare like with like (1983 being pre-unification). No figures for Cars and Buses in 1993 for Japan. For some reason the US hasn't provided any Bus figures for either year, except intercity only for 1983 - which is not much use. Ireland, Greece and (surprisingly) Luxembourg don't seem very good at counting passenger-kms, except on trains.

"Cars" include "Taxis" - "Buses" include "Coaches", and (presumably) include all types of operation. The Rail figures exclude metro systems - don't ask me why. Looks like two-wheeled vehicles are excluded. All figures relate to passenger-kilometres.

The land transport figures come from a table headed "Passenger transport by national vehicles on national territory", although in some cases foreign vehicles are included too. I'm assuming that cross-border journeys are split between the two countries concerned - in some places, e.g. Belgium, these could be a significant proportion.

However, the air figures come from a separate table called "Selected outputs of airlines". To get domestic figures, I've subtracted "International pass-kms." from "Total pass-kms." The allocation to countries is on the basis of the country of registration of the airline. This has two effects:

1. Unlike land transport, international travel is excluded. This will skew the data - I need to split out European air travel, which I don't have yet.
2. If an airline carries domestically in a foreign country, those pass-kms would be excluded.

I've made no correction for population increase, which is pretty negligible in these countries anyway (not sure about Japan though).

OK, some figures. Overall modal shares for 1993 as follows for Western Europe - Japan not available for reasons stated
Rail: 7% Car: 83% Bus: 9% Air: 1%

For US, excluding Bus for reason stated;
Rail: 0.4% Car: 89% Air: 10.9%

Japan in 1983 had;
Rail 39% Car 45% Bus 12% Air 4%

Must say these figures would make a lot more sense if I could split urban from inter-urban. Will look for data.

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Now for changes 1983-93. Overall, Rail volume (pass-kms.) has increased at an average annual rate of:

W Europe: 1.5% Japan: 2.3% US: 2.9%

That last is surprising - from 16.6 bn. pass-kms in 1983 to 22.2 bn. in 1993. Presumably the increase is commuter rail.

The only countries showing falls are Finland, France (surprise!), Sweden and Spain - even UK is up slightly. OTOH, Austria rose by 2.6% per annum, Ireland by 3.7%, Germany by 4.0%, Netherlands by 5.5%, and Switzerland by 3.3%.

Car volume up Europe 3.9%, US 3.3%. Bus fairly stable in Europe as a whole, but patchy.

Air up Europe 5.8% p.a, Japan 5.9%, USA 4.8%.

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Now for changes in modal share. Bus is down just about everywhere. Car is up everywhere except Netherlands and Switzerland. Rail is down everywhere except Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden.

I suspect a large part of the modal shift is a result of changes in the volume of particular types of trips, rather than people switching modes within a constant trip pattern. (The average length of car trip in the UK went up by 31% between 1985/6 and 1992/4.)