A ten-year comparison reveals that 24 of the 27 countries reporting data saw a relative increase in road transport between 2013 and 2023. However, the data also noted that moving goods by road remains relatively more carbon-intensive than rail.
Motorway construction has seen a sharp rise during the same period. Half of the reporting countries saw at least a 10% increase in their motorway coverage, with eight countries increasing their motorway share of all roads by more than 50%. The countries leading this trend are Bosnia and Herzegovina (362%), Czechia (79%), and Türkiye (66%).
Ireland (99%), North Macedonia (99%), and Türkiye (96%) reported the highest shares of road freight transport, all of which have maintained similar levels since 2013. This stability differs from the trends in the Baltic countries. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have seen significant increases in road transport, with shares rising by 29, 32, and 26 percentage points, respectively, from 2013 to 2023.
ITF noted that connectivity is a critical element of transport infrastructure. It directly impacts the efficiency and costs of moving freight and passengers between locations. The degree of connectivity can be assessed using network-specific attributes, like infrastructure density. ITF data reveal that rail and road infrastructure density is positively correlated to population density.
Only Italy, Hungary, and Sweden recorded an increase in the share of rail freight transport, although these countries still rely most heavily on road freight. Georgia (84%), Slovenia (60%), and Austria (50%) reported the biggest rail shares in 2023, maintaining stable levels since 2013.
For example, rail density is notably higher in smaller, densely populated countries like Luxembourg (24 km per km²), Belgium (21 km per km²), and Germany (20 km per km²). Larger, sparsely populated nations show much lower densities like Canada (0.7 km per km²), Kazakhstan (0.6 km per km²), and Australia (0.4 km per km²).
Similarly, countries like Malta (888 km per km²), Belgium (503 km per km²), and the Netherlands (422 km per km²) have the highest road infrastructure density, while Canada (13 km per km²), Australia (11 km per km²), and Kazakhstan (4 km per km²) rank the lowest for road infrastructure.
ITF said that trends in rail electrification show that, over the past decade, few reporting countries have made significant efforts to electrify rail transport. The four countries that most increased their share of electrified railways since 2013 – Türkiye (121%), Lithuania (82%), Estonia (77%), and Greece (64%) – still lag behind those with the highest levels of rail electrification. They are Armenia, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, where more than 80% of tracks are electrified.
