THE SIZE OF PUBLIC PASSENGER TRANSPORT AND THE NUMBER OF PASSENGER CARS IN POLAND AND SLOVAKIA

Abstract

The increase in wealth of the society leads to an increase in the number of possessions. Nowadays, one of the basic goods is our own vehicle. Starting from the second half of the twentieth century a passenger car has become the own means of transport in Europe. The development of the automotive industry is critical for the changes taking place in the way of satisfying transport needs. The increase in the number of cars in society usually leads to a lower demand for public transport services. The paper is a comparison of the size of the public transport of passengers and the number of passenger cars in two bordering countries, i.e. in Poland and Slovakia. The available data collected by the statistical offices of both countries were used in the analyses. The data covered the years 2007–11 and related provinces and regions in Poland and Slovakia. In order to compare with each other the studied variables, these data were referred to the size of the population in the regions. To study the relationship between variables the correlation analysis as well as linear regression were used. The conducted analysis shows that the growth of the automotive industry has contributed to the decline in the number of public passenger transport in both countries. For each country this relationship was described by the linear regression equation. In addition, for both countries there were determined linear trend equations of the studied variables and demonstrated the existence of analogous trends in the regions. Also there were shown some differences between regions and countries, which are expressed mainly in the values of variables, and the pace of change.