Rail freight is shrinking 07/07/23

Source: https://intermodalnews.pl/2023/07/07/maleja-przewozy-towarowe-na-kolei/

Author: BP 2023/07/07

Rail freight is shrinking

May 2023 in rail freight transport is another month in a row of lower volume of transported weight in the year-on-year comparison. Last month, 18.6 million tons of goods were transported by rail, which is 2.6 million tons less (-12.2%) than in May 2022, the Office of Rail Transport reported.

photo: Pixabay

A decrease was also recorded in the volume of transport performance, which amounted to almost 5 billion tonne-kilometres - 0.5 billion tonne-kilometres less (-8.5%) than a year ago. In the case of the operational performance of freight trains, which amounted to 6.9 million train-kilometres, the decrease was 0.6 million train-kilometres (-7.8%) year on year. On the other hand, the average transport distance of 1 tonne of goods was higher than in May 2022 (by almost 11 km), reaching 266 km.

May 2023 in rail freight was slightly better than April. In total, the weight of transported goods increased by 0.6 million tons (+3.3%) month-on-month, freight turnover was higher by 0.06 billion tonne-kilometres (+1.2%), and operational performance increased by 0.1 million train-kilometres (+1.9%) compared to a month earlier. Only the average distance of transporting 1 ton of cargo was lower than in April 2023 - by almost 6 km.

In total, in the first five months of 2023, almost 97.1 million tonnes of goods were transported by rail, transport performance amounted to 25.9 billion tonne-kilometres, and operational performance amounted to 35.5 million train-kilometres. Compared to the period January-May 2022, this means a decrease in the weight of goods transported by rail by 7.7 million tons (-7.4%) and a decrease in operational performance by 0.2 million train-colometers (-0.7%). In the case of transport performance, this is a slight increase - by 0.6 billion tonne-kilometres (+2.4%) compared to the first five months in 2022.