Rail usage statistics by country

This is a list of countries by rail usage. Rail usage may be measured in tonne-kilometres (tkm) or passenger-kilometres (pkm) travelled for freight and passenger transport respectively. This is the number of tonnes or passengers multiplied by the average distance of their journeys in kilometres.

Almost 10,000 billion freight tonne-kilometres are travelled around the world. Roughly one quarter of these are travelled in the United States, another quarter in China, and a third in Russia. Of the 3,000bn passenger-kilometres travelled across the world, 1,158bn of these are travelled solely in India. The average Swiss person travels 2,430 km by train each year, almost 500 more than the average Japanese person (the Japanese having the second-highest average kilometres travelled per passenger in the world).

In 2014 there were around 1 million kilometres of railway in the world (a decrease of 3% compared to 2013). Of this, 350,000 km were in Europe and mainly used for passenger service, 370,000 km were in North America and mainly used for freight, and 230,000 km were in Asia and used for both freight and passenger service. In America and Europe, there are many low cost airlines and motorways which compete with rail for passenger traffic, while Asia has seen a large growth in high-speed rail with 257bn pkm representing 72% of total world high-speed rail passenger traffic.

Countries with more than one billion tonne-kilometres (tkm) travelled per year. Unless otherwise specified, data come from the Railway Statistics 2014 Report by the International Union of Railways.

Countries with more than ten million tonnes carried per year. Unless otherwise specified, data come from the Railway Statistics 2014 Report by the International Union of Railways.

The modal share carried by rail of all freight in a given country.

These figures do not include metro railway systems; see Lists of rapid transit systems for metro rail statistics.

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