While cars remain the most widely used form of passenger transport in the European Union, rail travel has overtaken buses for the first time in a decade, new data from Eurostat has revealed.
Cars accounted for 69.2% of total passenger-kilometres in 2024, or around 6,130 billion passenger-kilometres, which is a one-percentage-point decrease on the previous year.
Transport by plane accounted for 15.8% of total passenger-kilometres, up by 1.0 percentage points. Rail accounted for 7.5%, up 0.3 percentage points, while buses, coaches and trolleybuses accounted for 7.3%, down 0.2 points. Sea transport represented 0.4%, unchanged from 2023.
According to Eurostat, this was the first time since 2014 that rail had overtaken the buses/coaches public-transport category.
In the decade since 2014, the share of overall passenger travel accounted for by cars fell by 2.9 percentage points, while buses, coaches and trolleybuses fell 1.3 percentage points. Rail gained 0.9 percentage points over the same period, while air travel rose by 3.6 percentage points.
Country by country
On a country-by-country basis Lithuania (83.7% of total passenger-kilometres), the Netherlands (77.0%) and Finland (75.4%) registered the highest shares of transport by passenger car among all EU member states.
In terms of air transport, meanwhile, Croatia boasted the highest share (45.6%), followed by Bulgaria (30.3%) and Cyprus (25.3%).
Hungary had the highest share of rail transport (11.4%), followed by Austria (10.4%) and the Netherlands (9.8%). For buses/coaches, meanwhile, Malta (17.0%) had the highest share, followed by Ireland (16.6%) and Hungary (15.3%).
The data was released to coincide with European Mobility Week, which runs from 16 to 22 September. Read more here.
