The chart above shows kilometers of rail per thousand people in EU states. Estonia ekes out the top spot surpassing Sweden in kilometers of track per person.
Findings
- The difference between the state with the most rail per capita, Estonia, and the state with the least, the Netherlands (Malta and Cyprus do not have any rail), is 1.49 kilometers.
- Estonia has 9.80 times the rail per capita that the Netherlands does.
- Only three states have more than one-and-a-half kilometer of rail per thousand inhabitants.
- Seven states have less than one-half of a kilometer of rail per thousand inhabitants.
- The mean kilometers of rail for every thousand inhabitants for the EU is 0.78 and the median 0.75.
Caveats
- Population data is from 2011.
- Rail length data is from 2016 except for Belgium (2009), Denmark (1998), Greece (2015), the Netherlands (2003), Austria (2007), and Poland (2015).
- Rail and population data come from different sources.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth.
- Cyprus and Malta have no rail network.
Details
Estonia also happens to have the highest per capita road coverage in the EU. Unlike with road coverage however, Eastern EU states are pretty well represented when it comes to rail coverage. The Southern EU does not have a single state with greater rail coverage than any Eastern or Northern EU state and two Southern EU states have no rail at all.
The European Union as a whole has 0.64 kilometers of rail for every thousand inhabitants ranking it under Slovakia and above Belgium.
Sources
Eurostat. 2017. "Data Explorer." Accessed December 11, 2017. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=urb_lpop1&lang=en.
Eurostat. 2018. "Eurostat - Data Explorer: Railway Transport - Length of Tracks." Accessed March 20, 2018. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do.