Trend in freight transport demand and GDP

Green indicates faster growth in GDP than in transport while red indicates stronger growth in transport than in GDP. Figure 1 shows a large increase in freight tkm in 2004. This is due to a change in the methodology used to calculate the estimates for this year. (see metadata for more details) The main reason is that countries had to harmonise their surveys with the EU legislation, Freight transport demand is defined as the amount of inland tonnes-kilometre travelled every year in the EEA32. Inland freight transport includes transport by road, rail and inland waterways. The current version of the indicators is based on inland transport only. Although statistics on sea transport are already well developed, due to their predominantly international nature, there are conceptual difficulties in dealing with these modes in a manner consistent with the inland modes. Data from Lichtenstein is not included as it was not available as part of the dataset .The ratio of annual growth of inland freight transport to GDP, measured in 2000 prices, determines the amount of coupling between GDP and transport. The decoupling indicator, depicted by the green bars, is calculated as unity minus the coupling ratio; so a positive score indicates decoupling (i.e. transport demand grows less slowly than GDP), with a negative score showing the opposite (i.e. transport demand outpaces GDP growth).