Rail Freight Transport: Decline in Freight Volume and Transport Performance. Rail freight transport indicators showed a downward trend in 2019: Both freight volume—totaling 116.8 million net metric tons (2018: 117.9 million)—and transport performance—at 23.2 and 46.3 billion net and gross metric ton-kilometers, respectively (2018: 23.7 and 46.6 billion, respectively), have each declined. Figure 3: Development of the rail freight market, 2015–2019. Source: Survey by Schienen-Control.
The market share of competing rail carriers in terms of net metric tons continued to rise to 36.4 percent. Although Rail Cargo Austria continued to hold by far the largest market share across all freight transport indicators in 2019, its competitors were able to gain further ground that year:Their market share rose both in terms of volume (net metric tons)—from 33.3 percent in 2018 to 36.4 percent in 2019—and in terms of transport performance (net metric ton-kilometers)—from 30.7 percent to 31.8 percent year-over-year.
Of the 42 rail companies licensed for freight transport, Rail Cargo Austria had the highest market share in net ton-kilometers, at 68.2 percent. Behind it were five other companies, each with a market share of over three percent; the remaining companies had shares below that level.As in the previous year, the strongest competitors were the German company Lokomotion and the Austrian company LTE, each with around 4.7 percent, followed by TXLogistik with around four percent. Cargo Service (CargoServ) and Wiener Lokalbahnen Cargo stood at around 3.7 and 3.3 percent, respectively.When viewed by route category within the ÖBB network, competitors’ market shares (measured in gross ton-kilometers) increased across the board in 2019, although they had declined on the supplementary network and remained virtually stable on the rest of the core network in 2018. It is worth noting, first, that market shares on the Brenner and Western axes were already remarkably high prior to this, but increased significantly once again in 2019 and now stand at over 45 percent and just below that, respectively. However, as was already the case from 2017 to 2018, traffic volume on the Brenner corridor declined again in 2019 in absolute terms. Interestingly, the Brenner corridor is the route segment on which, compared to the other segments mentioned, the fewest competitors operate in terms of number. The Western Corridor is the route segment on which, alongside the other international corridors (e.g., the Tauern and Semmering routes), the most companies operated transport services. On the Western Corridor, the number of competitors increased significantly once again—by three percentage points—due to the entry of new market participants and the resulting intensified competition, even as total absolute traffic volume rose relatively sharply. In absolute terms, however, traffic volume in the supplementary network and on other international routes declined slightly in 2019, while it grew slightly in the rest of the core network. In summary, it can be stated that competition in freight transport remains strongest on the Brenner corridor, followed by the Western Corridor.