Freight Statistics
This dashboard shows freight performance for airports, ports, rail and road modes of transport including freight activity (million tonnes of freight moved) and gender (Employee gender breakdowns). In addition, information about:
- the weight and value of sea freight exported and imported;
- airport delays and cancellations; and
- rail intermodal transit times by corridor.
BITRE freight publications:
This publication provides statistics on maritime freight and shipping activities in Australia. Data is available on:
- Australian sea freight movements;
- vessel activity;
- the use of coastal trading licences; and
- the size and composition of the Australian trading fleet.
Waterline reports on trends in:
- throughput;
- container handling productivity on the waterfront and the land side of ports in Australia; and
- the cost of importing and exporting containers via five container ports.
It covers both the loading and unloading of container ships and the transport of containers from container terminals.
Trainline provides insights, analysis, and an understanding of the railway industry. It presents an overview and data on:
- railway transport tasks performed;
- characteristics of the railways and train operators' rolling stock that runs; and
- aspects of railway performance, including safety, environment and reliability.
Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics Yearbook
The yearbook contains estimates on the amount of goods moved in the Australian economy. Freight transport activity, including heavy vehicle use, is measured in terms of tonne kilometres (the movement of one tonne of freight by one kilometre).
Freight vehicle congestion in Australia’s five major cities – 2020
This publication is the second in a planned regular series that uses vehicle telematics data to provide measures of traffic congestion for freight vehicles on 53 selected routes across Australia’s five mainland state capital cities—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
Monitoring report 2020 Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme
This report presents results of the first four-yearly review of all components of the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme.
Regional port catchments for road freight
This Information Sheet uses freight vehicle telematics data to illustrate the freight catchment areas of Australia’s five mainland capital city ports.
The Freightline series is intended to provide information on interregional freight movements across Australia, filling a major gap in Australian transport-related data and information.
BITRE engagement with Ports Australia on improved container port efficiency measures
BITRE is working with Ports Australia to develop improved measures of Australian container port efficiency.
BITRE currently publishes numerous metrics in its Waterline publication, but there are many gaps, making it difficult to assess the efficiency of Australian ports. As identified by the ACCC in its Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report 2021-22, existing measures of efficiency including those in Waterline and the World Bank / S&P Global Container Port Performance Index have limitations, and there would be value in developing new and improved measures.
In consultation with port authorities and container terminal operators, Ports Australia has proposed a list of additional indicators that would be useful and feasible from the industry’s perspective. These include potential new measures on reliability, pit-stop times, ship rates, container dwell times, rail utilisation, truck waiting time and empty container park metrics.
BITRE has agreed to commence calculating some of these from existing data for a future issue of Waterline, with a longer-term ambition of integrating new data shared from port authorities and container terminal operators. This would build on the data that industry already provides to Waterline.
The collaboration aligns with the National Freight Data Hub project on better quality efficiency data for container ports, which can be found here.
Additional related website:
The Hub will be a federated data sharing network that has an initial focus on governments providing better access to their data; facilitates data exchange, including by establishing data standards; and promotes leadership and innovation.
By making high quality and timely freight data more widely available, the Hub will enhance the collection and access to freight data across all modes.