Increases in people using all forms of public transport

There were significant increases in the numbers of people using all modes of public transport last year, while the number of new private cars licensed on Irish roads fell, according to a major study of the transport sector.

The Transport Omnibus 2018, published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Thursday, presents a comprehensive picture of transport activity in the Republic, based on CSO data as well as official statistics from other governing bodies.

The data shows that 226.7 million passengers were carried on scheduled bus services in 2018, which was up more than 4 per cent from 217.6 million the year before.

The Luas tram service in Dublin carried 41.8 million passengers, which was up from 37.6 million in 2017, while 48 million passengers travelled by rail, which was up from 45.5 million the year before.

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The figures will be welcomed by climate activists who have keenly stressed the importance of using public transport rather than private vehicles, which add to carbon emissions.

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe announced in the recent budget that the State will spend an extra €384 million on new trams, rail cars, roads and other measures to boost transport next year.

The CSO data also shows there was a total of 2,717,722 vehicles under current licence in 2018, of which 2,106,369 (77.5 per cent) were private cars. This compares with 2,675,879 vehicles in 2017, of which 2,066,112 (77.2 per cent) were private cars.

Of the private cars, 121,157 were new cars licensed for the first time during the year, which represented a drop of 4.6 per cent on the 127,045 new cars licensed in 2017.

Fatalities

On fatalities, the data shows there were 142 people killed on Irish roads last year, which was a drop of 14 on the year before.

In relation to the rules of the road, a total of 177,092 penalty point endorsement notices were issued, which was down 6.3 per cent on the previous year. Men incurred almost twice as many as women. And almost two thirds of points issued were for speeding.

Women incurred proportionally more points for speeding than men at 70.6 per cent compared to 60.5 per cent. However, men incurred proportionally more for holding a mobile phone while driving at 16.7 per cent versus 13.5 per cent.

There were 798 drivers with 12 penalty points on their licences at the end of 2018, of which 106 drivers received all 12 penalty points during the calendar year. The total number of drivers with penalty points on their licences was 523,115.

More than 1.3 million cars underwent the National Car Test (NCT) in 2018. Just over half (50.8 per cent) failed the initial test, but 95.7 per cent of cars passed after one or more tests.

In terms of freight, Irish registered goods vehicles made 13.4 million laden journeys and transported a total of 150 million tonnes. Those figures were up on 2017 when vehicles made 12.8 million journeys and transported a total of 147.2 million tonnes.

In aviation, a total of 36.6 million passengers passed through Irish airports in 2018, which was an increase of 6 per cent on 2017. Dublin airport accounted for 85.6 per cent of air passengers.

In relation to maritime, a total of 13,264 trading vessels of 100 gross tonnes or more arrived in Irish ports, which was an increase on the year before when there were 12,829 vessels.

In total, 55.1 million tonnes of goods were handled by Irish ports, of which, 37.1 million tonnes of goods were unloaded and 18 million tonnes were loaded. Both figures were also up marginally on the year before.