2009 was a very difficult year for goods transport on the Danube. The global financial crisis considerably affected inland waterway transport in Austria and the sector was also faced with navigation blockages of the Danube waterway due to ice and high water. These unfavourable conditions are reflected in the volume of goods transported in this year: In 2009 a total of 9.3 million tons of goods were carried on the Austrian section of the Danube, which is equivalent to a decrease of 16.8% or 1.9 million tons over 2008. Consequently, transport performance on the Danube within Austria also declined by 15.1% to 2.0 billion ton-kilometres.

In autumn 2008, industrial production in Europe started to decline significantly, which also affected the demand for inland waterway transport. A slight recovery in Europe’s economic situation was seen in the second half of 2009. Regarding the volumes of goods transported on the Austrian Danube, goods transport levels bottomed out in the second quarter of the year. From the second half of 2009 onwards, transport volumes started to increase again.

In the import sector, which accounts for 53.1% of the overall volume of goods transported by inland vessels, the transport volume fell by 13.7% or 785,329 tons to 4.9 million tons compared to 2008. About 75% of the goods entered Austria from the east.

Compared to the record result of the previous year (+40% compared to 2007), the export sector witnessed a decrease of 27.0% or 584,967 tons to 1.6 million tons. Just as in 2008, 52% of the exported goods crossed the eastern border and 48% crossed the western border of the Austrian territory.

The volume of transit transport on the Austrian section of the Danube decreased by 12.2% or 343,840 tons to 2.5 million tons. This is an extrapolated figure since Statistics Austria uses an estimation model to compensate for the existing under coverage of transit transport.

Finally, domestic traffic on the Danube waterway fell by 34.4% or 172,766 tons to 329,462 tons.