Total railfreight volume rose from 111.1 to 113.3 million tonnes and freight performance rose from 21.2 to 22.5 billion tonne-km, the highest figure ever recorded and exceeding the pre-crisis peak achieved in 2008.

Even incumbent operator Rail Cargo Austria (RCA) managed to increase both its volumes and freight performance although it was outpaced by open-access operators, which increased their share of the market (in tonne-km) to 21.4%, compared with 19.3% in 2013.

The number of block trains is increasing and in 2014 63% of gross tonne-km was carried in block trains, compared with 55% in 2013. Whilst block trains accounted for 99% of open-access operations volumes in 2014, RCA carried 53% of its freight on block trains, up from just 45% in 2013.

Private operators are focussing largely on international markets and now have a 41% share on the transalpine Brenner corridor and 29% on the Danube axis. Lokomotion is the largest open-access operator with a market share of 5%, followed by CargoServ (3.3%), LTE (3.1%) and TX Logistik (2.7%).

Passenger traffic saw a slight increase in 2014 with total ridership rising from 274 to 278 million and passenger-km increasing from 11.9 to 12.1 billion. Private operators again performed better. Whilst Austrian Federa Railways (ÖBB) reported a 0.8% increase in passengers, private operators achieved growth of 4.8% As a result the market share of private operators by ridership increased from 14.5% in 2013 to 15.4% last year and from 10.7% to 11.8% by passenger-km.