Only one country ahead of us

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In an EU comparison, Austrians are in second place when it comes to rail travel.

(Bild: Birbaumer Christof/Christof Birbaumer, Krone KREATIV)

Rail travel is very popular in Austria. With 1444 rail kilometers traveled per inhabitant in 2022, Austria ranks second in an EU comparison, just behind France with 1447 rail kilometers, according to a report published on Thursday. Austria is ranked third in Europe, while Switzerland remains by far the number one rail country in Europe with 2195 rail kilometers per capita.

All participating authorities in the 31 European countries surveyed reported a significant increase in passenger transport for 2022 compared to 2021, the report continues. However, rail transport has not yet fully recovered from the coronavirus pandemic. Austria also broke its previous record of 1507 rail kilometers traveled per inhabitant before the coronavirus pandemic in 2019.

Although there was a four percent increase in the number of rail connections offered in 2022 compared to 2021, the figure was still two percent below that of 2019.

More train kilometers traveled in freight transport
Meanwhile, rail freight transport saw a slight increase in train kilometers traveled in 2022 compared to 2021, although transport performance (net tonne-kilometers) decreased slightly. According to the report, a total of 463 billion net tonne-kilometers were generated in 30 countries.

Germany continued to hold the largest share with 140 billion net tonne-kilometers, followed by Poland and France. Austria was in fifth place with 23.8 billion net tonne-kilometers. The so-called incumbents ("state railroads") provided an average of 48 percent of transport services in the national market, 37 percent were provided by private freight railroads and the remainder by foreign incumbents.