In 2024, cars were the most used means of transportation in the EU.
Cars accounted for 69.2% of total passenger-kilometres (estimated at 6 130 billion passenger-kilometres), indicating a decrease of 1.0 percentage point (pp) compared with 2023. Transport by airplane made up 15.8% of total passenger-kilometres, up by 1.0 pp from 2023. Trains followed with 7.5% (+0.3 pp compared with 2023), surpassing buses, coaches or trolleybuses at 7.3% (-0.2 pp), and sea vessels at 0.4% (unchanged). The share of trains has seen a slow increase in recent years, exceeding the share of buses, coaches or trolleybuses in 2024 for the first time since 2014.
Compared with 2014, in 2024, the shares of travel in the EU by cars and by buses, coaches and trolleybuses decreased by 2.9 pp and 1.3 pp, respectively, while trains and airplanes became more popular, with a 0.9 and 3.6 pp increase, respectively.
At country level, 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 EU countries in 2024.
For air transport, Croatia recorded the highest share of air passenger-kilometres in total transport performance (45.6%), followed by Bulgaria (30.3%) and Cyprus (25.3%).
Malta had the highest share of transport by buses, coaches, or trolleybuses (17.0% of total passenger-kilometres), followed closely by Ireland (16.6%) and Hungary (15.3%).
Rail transport played an important role in Hungary (11.3% of total passenger-kilometres), Austria (10.4%) and the Netherlands (9.8%).
As for sea transport, Estonia registered the largest share of passenger-kilometres (2.7%), closely followed by Malta (2.4%) and Croatia (2.3%).