5. Transport

During the period 1990 – 2001, a decline in demand for public passenger transport by nearly 50% occurred, while urban public transport decrease over the same period was significantly lower, approximately 13%.

In 2001 number of passengers transported by rail was at the level of 84% of that in 1995. Since 2000 it is possible to trace a turning point of gradual growth of passenger transport by rail because in the year 1999 its level was at 78% of that in 1995. Growth in the number of passengers carried by integrated transport systems is also interesting, where compared to 1995 this number increased in 2001 four times. It represented about 9% of total national passenger transport.

In national scheduled bus transport the fall in transport performance since 1990 is more than 50%. In the period 1999 – 2001 a moderate increase was observed, so the drop in performance in 2001 compared to 1995 was less than 10%.

Number of passengers carried by urban public transport in 2001 decreased compared to the year 1995 by 2 %. However permanent stable increase can be seen in passenger transport by metro (with only slight fall in 2000), where in 2001 number of passengers carried by this transport mode was by 7% higher than in 1995. It is caused, among other things, by expanding the metro network.

It may be stated that the air transport is in the Czech Republic the only transport mode which shows a permanent growth over recent years. Number of passengers carried by the Czech operators increased from 1993 more than twice and the growth of performance in passenger kilometres was even higher ( 160%). Number of handled passengers at the Czech airports increased over the same period twice.

In the period 1990 - 1997, the total transport performance of goods slightly increased (by about 5%), but the share of road transport in the total transport performance increased significantly. Its performance increased approximately 2.5 times to the detriment of the rail transport where the performance was reduced to the half. Inland waterway transport performance also fell by nearly 50% during this period. In 1998 the road transport performance decreased for the first time since 1990. Decline was about 15% compared to the year 1997. In the consecutive year, i.e. 1999, it started to increase again, especially due to international transport. This trend remained unchanged also until 2001. The rail transport started, for the first time since 1990, to grow again in 2000. Compared to the previous year the performance growth was about 5%. Unfortunately in 2001 rail transport performance decreased again by 3.5% and amounted to 28% of total freight transport performance.

From the environmental point of view it is really alarming that 67% of total international transport performance is realized by road transport. It is therefore appreciated that a combined transport shows slow, but stable growth. Goods transport in containers by rail has an average annual growth rate approximately 1.1. On the contrary decrease continues in combined transport over a short distance which caused significant reduction of combined transport terminals.

In waterway transport, which in the last period was balanced, the performance also decreased in 2001 in comparison with 2000 by almost 17% (its share in transport market is only 1.02 %).