Motorists clock up 42 billion kilometres

Irish-registered cars clocked up almost 26bn miles (42bn kilometres) — and incurred 257,564 penalty points in the process — in 2011.

The Central Statistics Office has released its transport “omnibus” for last year. The document gives an in-depth picture of how people chose to travel around the country and beyond.

The report reveals there were 2,425,156 vehicles on the roads in 2011, 87,000 of them newly registered private cars. In spite of the straitened times, 99 of those new cars were valued at more than €100,000 and two of them cost more than €250,000.

The CSO statistics prove there has been a dramatic shift away from petrol. Of the new cars licensed, 71% were diesel.

It was a testing year for both motorists and their motors. Almost 50% of the 128,000 driving tests taken ended badly. There were better odds for the cars themselves with 93% passing their NCT.

Almost 200m passengers were carried on scheduled bus services over the course of the year, with Dublin Bus alone accounting for 117m passengers. Also in Dublin, 29.1m passengers travelled on the Luas.

Iarnród Éireann carried 37.4m passengers and 611,000 tonnes of freight.

It was also a successful year for DublinBikes with 1.5m journeys taken on the bicycles which are dotted liberally around the capital.

Away from the roads, almost 24m passengers flew to and from Irish airports in 2011 with over three-quarters of them passing through Dublin Airport.

Almost 208,000 flights were handled by Ireland’s main airports. Dublin accounted for 159,975 flights while Cork had a total of 22,125 flights. Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted were the most popular routes.

The popularity of shorthaul routes meant the Boeing 737-800 and the Airbus A320 aircrafts carried 73.8% of total passengers to and from the main Irish airports.

A total of 12,059 trading vessels (of 100 gross tonnes or more) docked in Irish ports, unloading 30m tonnes of goods and loading up 15m tonnes.

Dublin port was the busiest, handling over two-fifths of all goods received and nearly half of all goods forwarded in 2011. The busiest ferry route was Dublin to Holyhead, which accounted for 55.6% of all passengers on scheduled ferry services.

Break down

* 2,666,559 Irish driving licences were held at the end of 2011, of which 10% were learner permit licences.

* More than three quarters of the penalty points issued in 2011 were for speeding. Men accounted for 63% of the points.

* Toyota (11,065), Volkswagen (11,007), Ford (10,108), Renault (8,478), and Nissan (6,556) were the most popular makes of new private cars licensed for the first time.

* Nine new cars worth more than €150,000 were registered. There were 99 new cars worth more than €100,000

* 186 people were killed on Irish roads in 2011. That was a decrease of 26 on the figure in 2010.

* In 2011, more air passengers flew on the Dublin-Heathrow route than on any other route.

* 195.3m passengers were carried on scheduled bus services, 29.1m passengers travelled on the Luas and 37.4m passengers travelled by rail.