Goods transport Slovakia
Industry
In the past the country mainly produced the products of heavy engineering and weapons for the countries of CMEA and the allies of the Soviet Union. This market declines after 1989.
Low labour costs and tax reform at the beginning of the 21st century became attractive for foreign investors, especially from the automotive industry which has an important position in Slovak economy. In Slovakia the biggest number of cars per person in the world is produced. There are the factories of Volkswagen in Bratislava, PSA Peugeot–Citroën in Trnava and Kia in Žilina. Another automotive company should arrive by 2018 – Januar Land Rover – with a production hall near Nitra. The second most important industry is electrotechnical industry. There is the factory of Foxconn near Nitra and near Galanta there is the company Samsung. Slovak industry has favourable prospects for the development and should continue to grow in the following years. In Slovakia in 2011 926,555 cars were produced. It is the biggest number of cars calculated per one inhabitant, concretely 171 cars per 1,000 inhabitants. In 2013 the production slightly increased to approximately 980,000 cars.
The country got the nickname Detroit of Europe due to the production of cars and Tiger of Tatra due to the development of its economy.
Air transport
In Slovakia there are 36 airports (20 of them with hard surface). Slovakia has 6 international airports in total, concretely in Bratislava, Košice, Piešťany, Poprad, Sliač and Žilina. The biggest airport in Slovakia is Airport of Milan Rastislav Štefánik in Bratislava. It transported 1,355,625 passengers in 2014.
Rail Transport
ŽSR manages 3,690 km of tracks of normal, wide and narrow gauge and 1,923 km of tracks with security equipment. It operates 1,159 railway crossings with signalisation, 8,733 switches, 76 tunnels with the length of 43.3 km, 2,283 bridges with the length of 46.7 km and 2,344 railway crossings. ŽSR company is the rail road operator in Slovakia pursuant to the law. The most important railway junctions are: Bratislava, Žilina, Košice, Zvolen a Nové Zámky. The longest railway tunnel in Slovakia and former Czechoslovakia is Tunnel of Čremošná with the length of 4.697 m.
The technical monuments include the dead centre Kusuce-Orava forest railway. It was in operation from 1926 to 1971. Nowadays it is a show-place.
Road transport
The total length of road communications is 42,993 km. 37,533 km of them have hard surface (including 447.7 km of highways and 259 km of express ways) and 5,460 km are unpaved. The categories of road communications: 1st class roads, 2nd class roads, 3rd class roads, express communications, highways (D1, D2, D3, D4).