The chart above shows the number of motor vehicles in EU regions by kilometer of roads. The Southern EU and the Western EU have the most vehicles per kilometer of roadway just as they have the highest vehicle to resident ratio.
Findings
- The difference between the region with the most vehicles per mile, the Southern EU, and the region with the least, the Northern EU, is 31 vehicles per kilometer of road (50 vehicles per mile of road).
- The Southern EU has 2.05 times the number of vehicles per unit of road that the Northern EU does.
- Only the Southern and Western EU have at least 50 vehicles per kilometer of road (80 vehicles per mile of road).
Caveats
- Ownership data is from 2015.
- Road length data is from 2008 except for Denmark which is from 2006, and Italy and Portugal which are from 2005.
- Ownership and road length data come from different sources.
- Total vehicles include automobiles, taxis, buses, trucks, and motorcycles of both public and private use.
- Bulgaria is not included because it did not have complete data in the road data set.
- The Southern EU consists of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta.
- The Western EU consists of Germany, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, and Luxembourg.
- The Eastern EU consists of Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria (not included), Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
- The Northern EU consists of Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.
Details
Even though the Western EU has the leading state in this metric, it falls short of the Southern EU which only holds two of the top five states.
The rate for the entire European Union is 55 vehicles per kilometer of road (89 vehicles per mile of road) which ranks the EU as a whole just under the Southern EU and above the Western EU.
Sources
European Union Road Federation. 2011. "European Road Statistics 2011." Accessed March 12, 2018. http://www.irfnet.eu/images/stories/Statistics/2011/ERF-2011-STATS.pdf.
International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. 2018. "Vehicles in Use - OICA." Accessed January 20, 2018. http://www.oica.net/category/vehicles-in-use/.