Passenger mobility statistics
Data extracted in November 2021.
No planned article update.
Highlights
Commuting is one of the main reasons for daily travel: between 27 % of the overall total distance covered in Germany and 47 % in Croatia is for work.
The car is the dominant mode of transport in the EU, with less than 2 persons on average per car.
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Passenger mobility refers to the movement of people using any kind of motorised, non-motorised, collective or individual means of transportation. Mobility represents a key economic driver as moving people is a pre-requisite for several activities and is therefore at the core of a well-functioning and prosperous society. Raising the efficiency and quality of a country’s mobility infrastructure strengthens the economy and increases the standard of living for its citizens.
This article explains a selection of results obtained through pilot projects carried out by EU Member States, co-funded by Eurostat and National Statistical Institutes. The goal of this initiative is to broaden the coverage and knowledge of passenger mobility, while applying a standard methodology. One condition for receiving a grant was to follow the Eurostat Passenger Mobility Guidelines (see Data sources at the end of this article). Surveys were carried out in various years, generally between 2013 and 2019 (see Table 5 in the article), therefore the reference years to which the data refers differ. The information obtained was complemented with results from surveys which were already being carried out in some Member States for a number of years.
This article covers data for thirteen Member States: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Croatia, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia.
Full article
Mobility data for thirteen Member States with different characteristics
Even though they were not randomly selected, the thirteen EU Member States for which mobility data are available show a very diverse spectrum:
- They cover a diverse area, from Portugal in the south-west of Europe to Latvia and Poland in the north-east;
- In terms of population (aged 15 to 84), the values range from 1.6 million in Latvia to 69 million in Germany;
- The population density ranges from 31 inhabitants per km² in Latvia to 501 inhabitants per km² in the Netherlands. Five out of the 13 Member States feature between 80 and 120 inhabitants per km². In most countries, 55 % to 73 % of households are located in urban zones, except for Italy (82 %) and Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium (all 90 % or more);
- The GDP per inhabitant ranges from EUR 10 510 in Romania to EUR 52 010 in Denmark;
- Linked to the income level and the population density, car ownership (expressed as number of cars per 1 000 inhabitants) ranges from 261 in Romania to 625 in Italy. With more than 90 % of the population living in urban areas, the Netherlands shows 487 cars per 1 000 inhabitants. The Netherlands, the most densely populated country in this group, features a considerable bicycle use (see Table 5), supporting the fact that our travel habits are influenced by a combination of factors (see Table 1).
Source: Eurostat (demo_r_d3dens), (demo_pjangroup), (nama_10_pc) and (road_eqs_carhab)
Urban trips
The number of urban trips (trips of less than 100 km within the same urban area) represent a substantial proportion of daily short-distance mobility (less than 300 km): from 41 % in Slovenia to around two thirds in Germany, 85 % in Portugal (influenced by the fact that only the two metropolitan areas, Lisbon and Porto, were surveyed) and almost all the total short-distance trips in Romania (99 %). In terms of distance, urban trips (of less than 100 km), represent around a quarter of the total distance travelled in short-distance trips made in Slovenia (24 %), while this value reaches 88 % in Romania (see Table 2).
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Distance covered
Daily urban trips: longest distances in Germany and shortest in Greece
Travel behaviour in terms of daily distance covered differs greatly: on an average day (working or non-working day) individuals cover only 5.6 km in Greece and 7.6 km in Croatia, but 19.0 km in Germany (see Figure 1).
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Largest daily distance travelled to work
Commuting is the main reason for the daily distance covered: between 27 % in Germany and 47 % in Croatia of the daily distance travelled is for work. In most cases, this is the distance between home and the place of work and back. Please note that the category “Professional/business” is an additional purpose and does not include commuting to work. “Leisure” or “Personal business” is generally the second purpose in terms of distance, followed by “Shopping” (see Figure 2 and Table 3).
Travel mode
Car still dominant
For urban mobility, regardless of the day (work or non-work), the private car is mostly used (as a driver or as a passenger) in all the 13 Member States covered. The share ranges from 57 % of the total daily distance travelled in Romania to 81 % in Slovenia. Bus, coach and urban rail combined are most frequently used in Romania and Poland (both around 30 % of the distance covered). Other national differences include a comparatively high share (7 %) for powered two-wheelers in Greece and a considerable 16 % for bicycles in the Netherlands, followed by Denmark and Belgium (both 7 %), then Germany (5 %) (see Table 4).
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Passenger car occupancy
In almost all countries, the car is the dominant mode of transport, which is a major issue in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This may change if the share of zero-emission cars (local zero-emission) increases considerably. Although fuel consumption and hence emissions from a car will only marginally differ between having only the driver on board or a fully occupied vehicle, its relative efficiency (in terms of CO2 emission per passenger-km) depends on the number of passengers in the vehicle.
The detailed results allow for the calculation of the average car occupancy for persons between 15 and 84 years old, and, for some Member States, the average occupancy for all ages. Indeed, the calculation is the sum of weighted total distance of car trips for any passenger (including those not in the 15-84 age range for ‘all ages’) plus the weighted total distance of car trips for drivers, divided by the weighted total distance of car trips as drivers.
For the population aged 15-84, the average occupancy rate for a passenger car used in urban trips is generally between 1.20 and 1.90 persons, with a minimum of 1.17 in Italy (population aged 15-80) and a maximum of 1.87 in Romania. Obviously, when all ages are considered, the value is higher. For the three countries which allow this calculation, the maximum is in Croatia, where an average 1.69 persons share a car for urban trips (see Figure 3).
Car usage by fuel type
In order to better monitor the aims and targets of the European Green Deal and notably the acceleration of the shift towards sustainable and smart mobility which includes drastically less polluting transport, especially in cities, it is important to look at the fuel used in the passenger cars performing urban trips. For this, the Eurostat Passenger Mobility Survey Guidelines recommend using detailed fuel categories: petrol, diesel, hybrids, full-electric, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), CNG (compressed natural gas) and hydrogen. Some countries are, however, not able to supply information for detailed fuel categories. This may be due to the vehicle register of the country concerned not featuring such a level of detail and/or that the survey did not ask for these details. Furthermore, vehicles powered by fuels other than petrol, diesel and LPG remain relatively rare (considering the reference years of the surveys), and may thus then be omitted from the survey sample. This led to a regrouping into three main categories: petrol, diesel and “other”, the latter including all other fuel types. Data from the mobility surveys nevertheless gives certain hints (see Figure 4).
For urban mobility (all days), diesel is the fuel used for the largest share of the distance travelled by car in countries such as Greece (86 %) and Portugal (63 %). In Romania the share of diesel fuel is only 26 %, while “other” fuel types represent a considerable share (38 %) compared with the other countries. In addition to hybrids, full electric, LPG, CNG and hydrogen, the category ‘other’ for Romania includes a significant share of ‘Unknown, unreported’. This is due to the characteristics of transport by passenger cars in Romania (see share of ‘By car, as passenger’ and ‘By taxi’ categories).
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Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
Eurostat Guidelines
One of the key elements that led to this article is the Eurostat Guidelines on Passenger Mobility Statistics. These guidelines have been written mainly for Member States that have never carried out passenger mobility surveys and needed methodology, guidance, definitions and support to conduct their survey. The guidelines contain information on the process of data collection and the definition of a set of indicators to be estimated from the results of the survey. This set of mobility indicators can then be compared with results from other European countries with experience of conducting mobility surveys.
The first draft guidelines were published in 2014. After comments and additional input, updated versions followed, incorporating further explanations and examples. The latest version is from December 2018.
Grants
In order to broaden the coverage of passenger mobility statistics, Eurostat has provided financial support through grants, from 2015 onwards, together with National Statistical Institutes. Funding has been used to conduct passenger mobility surveys (applying the aforementioned guidelines) or to better exploit existing survey results, through post-standardisation or by carrying out additional pilot surveys. During the implementation of the projects, Eurostat provided methodological guidance to countries so that they could optimise their results.
Nine new surveys from pilot studies plus three national travel surveys
Each survey is representative of the entire population of the country, except for Portugal, where it only covers the two metropolitan areas (Lisbon and Porto – i.e. 44 % of the national population). For all surveys, the respondents are aged between 15 and 84, except for Germany where the age range is from 18 to 74 years old.
The number of respondents in Germany was 237 662, which makes it the largest survey among the countries surveyed. The lowest value is registered in Croatia, with 4 100 respondents; this size is enough to make a calibration for a representative sample of the population. Romania had the highest response rate at 84 %, while the lowest was reported for Portugal (22 %), where a combination of CAWI/CAPI surveys was used. Given the share of trip-makers among respondents, Portugal shows more than 30 % of the respondents being immobile during the surveyed day. The highest share of trip-makers among respondents is 89 % for Austria. Please note that for Italy, the 100% response rate is explained by the quota sampling.
This article contains selected elements from a larger report, ‘‘Passenger Mobility Report based on surveys’’, containing Eurostat’s inventory of national passenger mobility surveys carried out in the individual EU Member States, with a particular emphasis on indicators that have been developed and calculated with the assistance of Eurostat. Most national passenger mobility surveys are designed to cover national information needs, are conducted regularly or irregularly and do not follow a standard methodology. The aforementioned larger report is a summary of the work carried out to collect a set of policy-relevant indicators on passenger mobility, in order to allow different groups of stakeholders - policy makers at European, national and regional level, researchers, academia and the public - to monitor progress towards policy objectives. The majority of the countries represented received financial support from Eurostat in cooperation with National Statistical Institutes for their projects and surveys. Consequently, the calculation of indicators presented in this article follows as closely as possible the methodologies written by Eurostat, with the aim of achieving comparability across Europe.
Methodology
The focus is on short-distance (urban) mobility, the methodology for which is more standardised in comparison to other distance classes.
Urban Mobility
Urban mobility[1] is defined as “Trips made by residents of an urban area, where both origin and destination are inside the same urban area“. All trips made within a Functional Urban Area (FUA) by the entire population living inside and outside a city should therefore be taken into account. Most surveys contain information about the location of the residence of the respondents. In this article, urban mobility is restricted to trips shorter than 100 km.
Short-distance mobility
Short-distance mobility is defined as any trip of less than 300 km. Unlike urban mobility, there is no restriction about the type of origin and destination areas.
Context
The Strategy for Sustainable and Smart Mobility sets the actions needed in each transport mode for delivering on the European Green Deal, enabling smoother connectivity and a more resilient Single European Transport Area. Efficient connectivity for all EU citizens is a critical aspect of social inclusion and an important determinant of well-being. It stimulates economic growth, territorial cohesion and helps reduce our impact to the environment. Transport is the only economic sector in which greenhouse gas emissions are higher than in 1990, despite the mitigation efforts undertaken. The European Green Deal has therefore set the key objective to deliver a 90% reduction in transport-related greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and passenger mobility has an important share in this respect.
Currently, only a few data collections can monitor the patterns of passenger mobility with a harmonised approach across EU countries. There is therefore a need for reliable statistics on passenger transport, in particular in urban areas. The data in this article are addressing this need and are enabling comparability that is the basis for evidence-based policy and accurate analysis of the transport system across Europe.
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In the past, some initiatives were launched to collect passenger mobility information, such as the DATELINE FP7 surveys on long distance, COST SHANTI action, and feedback received from countries as result of these activities.
Notes
- ↑ Before 2016 the definition of urban mobility was “Trips made by residents of a FUA and for which both origin and destination are inside the same FUA are urban. For non-urban residents, if the origin and destination of a trip is inside FUA, then the trip is urban.”