The transport volume in the Austrian Danube corridor has increased rapidly since the mid-1990s. In 2010, it exceeded 75 million tons, which is equivalent to a massive growth of 113% since 1995. (Data on road transport for 2010 is based on estimations by the Austrian Institute for Regional Studies and Spatial Planning; official data is still pending.) Compared to the crisis year 2009, transport volume in the corridor in 2010 increased by 15.9% or 10.4 million tons, but with a total amount of 75.4 million tons did not reach the volume of goods transported in 2008 which totalled 78.9 million tons.

The chart shows the cross-border transport volumes (net tons) for the three transport modes rail, road and waterway in the Danube corridor according to traffic mode (import, export and transit) in 2010. A look at the figures for all transport modes reveals that the quantity of goods transported to and from the west was significantly higher than the volume of goods crossing the eastern border of Austria. At 57.4 million tons, the level of bilateral transport (western and eastern border taken together) was still considerably higher than transit transport at 18.0 million tons. However, particularly transit transport has increased massively in the past few years. Today, its volume is nearly 2.2 times higher than in 1995. Transit road transport has increased by a factor of about 5.3.

Road transport dominated the modal split in the Danube corridor at close to 56%, meaning that the quantity of goods transported on the road was higher than the volume of goods carried by the other two transport modes combined. Between 2008 and 2010, a clear shift of transport volume from rail to road in downstream exports could be seen, whereas Danube navigation was able to roughly keep its share. On the other hand, rail transport was able to slightly extend its share at the expense of road transport in imports crossing the western border.

Despite the dominance of road transport, Danube navigation constitutes an important mode of transport in the corridor. Its significance is particularly reflected in upstream transport volumes: In the import sector, Danube navigation showed a significant share of slightly more than a third of the modal split in 2010, in transit transport its share amounted to 23% – meaning that in this traffic direction inland navigation had almost the same share as road transport in import traffic and rail transport in transit traffic. Both at the eastern border and in transit transport the Danube accounted for a share of slightly less than a third of the total transport volume. A decrease in the significance of waterway transport could only be seen in the import and export of goods at the western border as well as in transit traffic downstream – here road transport clearly dominated with a share of more than 60% in each case.