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Planes, trains and cars… Are Europeans changing how they get around?
According to the latest Eurostat data, the answer appears to be yes, albeit slowly. Nevertheless, cars remain by far the continent’s favourite way to travel.
Cars carried 69.2% of all passenger travel across the EU in 2024. That’s still overwhelmingly the most common way to get around, but it’s a share that’s been slowly shrinking.
For the first time since 2014, trains have overtaken buses, coaches and trolleybuses. Rail edged ahead to 7.5% of all travel, just past buses at 7.3%.
It’s a modest crossover; both modes still trail cars by a wide margin, but it’s a milestone that hasn’t happened in a decade. Sea travel remained the smallest slice of all, largely unchanged at 0.4%.
Look back a full decade, and the picture sharpens considerably. No mode of transport grew faster than air travel, up 3.6 percentage points since 2014.
That’s well clear of rail’s smaller 0.9-point gain over the same period, a second, quieter shift running alongside the trains-over-buses milestone making headlines now.
Cars, meanwhile, gave up 2.9 points over the decade, and buses lost 1.3. Put together, the direction is unmistakable. Fewer journeys are happening by road, and more by rail and by air, even as cars keep their commanding lead over everything else.
How travel habits vary by country
Zoom into individual countries, and the EU-wide averages break apart into very different national stories.
Lithuanians rely on cars more than anyone else in the EU, with 83.7% of all their travel happening on the road. The Netherlands (77%) and Finland (over 75%) aren’t far behind, all three among the bloc’s most car-dependent nations.
Flying, meanwhile, is close to a way of life in Croatia, where it accounts for nearly half of all travel, 45.6%, likely a byproduct of its island geography and heavy reliance on tourism. Bulgaria (30.3%) and Cyprus (25.3%) also rank among the EU’s most air-dependent countries, for similar reasons.
Rail carries the most weight in Hungary, at 11.3% of all travel, and Austria, just over 10%. Buses hold their strongest ground in Malta, Ireland and Hungary, all countries where rail networks are comparatively limited.
As for sea travel, it’s the island and coastal nations that lead the way: Estonia, Malta and Croatia, though even there it remains a small fraction of overall travel.