Ferry Passengers Tally in at 854M

In its annual compilation over world-wide ferry transportation, Swedish-based ShipPax Information registered 854,668,842 passengers within 2002, as well as 149,489,122 cars, 815,322 buses and 22,768,383 trailers. This volume was transported on 4,342,013 trips. It virtually means that every eighth second a ferry is leaving or entering a port, and each hour, 97,500 passengers are boarding a ferry. Still, the numbers can not be complete as long as volumes are not reported from every corner of the world. Therefore, the total transportation work of the ferry industry can only be estimated at way above 1 billion passengers. As such, however, passenger shipping probably would more than equal all airline passenger figures. In addition, passenger vessels also carry a substantial number of vehicles.