Transport allows people to move across cities, countries, and continents. It allows us to trade goods and products across the world by road, rail, sea or air.

It has become an essential part of our lives, whether it’s getting to work or school; delivering essential services or necessities to different communities; or connecting people and industries across the world. It’s now a key driver of economic development.

But transport also negatively affects our health and the environment through road injuries and fatalities, air pollution, and CO₂ emissions which drive climate change.

On this page, you can find data, visualizations, and writing on transport patterns across the world, how this is changing, and its environmental impacts.

Research & Writing

Tracking global data on electric vehicles

Explore data on electric car sales and stocks worldwide.

Hannah Ritchie

What share of global CO₂ emissions come from aviation?

Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions. But it has contributed around 4% to global warming to date.

Hannah Ritchie

Which form of transport has the smallest carbon footprint?

How can individuals reduce their emissions from transport?

Hannah Ritchie

Transport and CO₂ emissions

Cars, planes, trains: where do CO₂ emissions from transport come from?

Hannah Ritchie

Global inequalities in CO₂ emissions from aviation

Hannah Ritchie

Where in the world do people have the highest CO2 emissions from flying?

Hannah Ritchie

Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from?

Hannah Ritchie

Transport, food, and CO₂ emissions

You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

Hannah Ritchie

Very little of global food is transported by air; this greatly reduces the climate benefits of eating local

Hannah Ritchie

Interactive Charts on Transport

Cite this work

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:

Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2021) - “Transport” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/transport' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owid-transport,
    author = {Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser},
    title = {Transport},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2021},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/transport}
}

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