Ljubljana - Measures aimed at curbing the coronavirus epidemic have had a severe impact on public passenger transport in Slovenia, while cargo transport was less affected, data from the Statistics Office show.

Between January and September, public passenger transport was halved compared with the same period a year ago, the sharpest decline being observed at ports and airports.

In the first half of the year, trains transported almost 4.3 million passengers within Slovenia, down 37% from the same period in 2019. In total, 200 million passenger kilometres were made.

The year-on-year decline in rail cargo transport was 10.1%. In total, 2.4 billion tonne kilometres were made in the first half of the year.

The hardest hit was air passenger transport with Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport serving just over 267,000 passengers between January and September, which is only 18.5% of the passengers it had in the same period last year.

The airport handled about 7,600 tonnes of goods in the first nine months of the year, 11.5% less than in the same period of 2019.

Meanwhile, Slovenia's three seaports saw a 25.2% decline in the number of ships between January and September, and less than 1% of the passengers that they had on the same period a year ago.

Due to the pandemic, no cruise ship has entered Slovenian ports this year, while goods transport in the Koper port decreased by 18.6% year-on-year from January to September.

In the first half of the year, 5.1% less goods were transported by road, and lorries made 9.4% fewer tonne kilometres on Slovenian roads than in the same period of 2019.

The impact of lockdown restrictions is also seen on the number of cars registered for the first time in Slovenia in the first half of the year, which fell by 21% year-on-year to 65,300.