Photo: Mr. Meardon, Bonmahon mines, with group in motor cars, 1906

• The total number of cars in Ireland in 1915 was 9,850, with close to the same number of motorcycles.
• By 2014, there were 1.9 million private cars and 36,573 motorcycles in the Republic.
• In 1907, the first Ford cars ever to be seen in Ireland went on display at the Irish Motor Show held in the grounds of the Royal Dublin Society. By 1913, some 600 Ford cars were sold throughout Ireland.
• In 1917, Henry Ford established Henry Ford & Son Ltd. It began as a private venture and later became a division of the Ford Motor Company. Ford, who had over 7,000 employees in Cork by 1930, continued manufacturing vehicles in Cork until 1984.
• Ford tractors were the first to be produced on a massive scale and the first farm tractors to be affordable for the average farmer. The first Fordson tractor left the assembly line in Cork in 1919 and by the end of that year 303 tractors had been built in Cork.

• There were 9,850 cars in Ireland in 1915 and a third of them, 3,331, were in Dublin. 
• There were cars in each county in 1915, with the lowest number in Longford at 68. 
• By 2014 there were nearly two million cars in Ireland, with a quarter of these cars in Dublin.

• Ships were the only method of transporting people and goods to and from the island of Ireland to the outside world in 1916. The major ports in Ireland in 1916 had connections from the major railways up to their docks and quays.
• In 1911, there were more than 80 cross-channel sailings per week to Britain from Dublin port and many of these sailings carried emigrants. Cattle boats left at least seven times a day from Dublin port. By 1918, there were 38 steamship companies operating across the Irish Sea and most carried passengers as well as cargo.
• The ports on the island of Ireland in 1913 handled 26.5 million tonnes of goods and this compares with 47.5 million tonnes of goods handled in 2014. Data for the years of World War I is not complete and thus a comparison with the year 1916 is not possible.
• One of the most famous passenger boats to leave an Irish port was the Titanic, built in Belfast, which left Queenstown (Cobh) following the embarking of 123 passengers on April 11, 1912. The Titanic, which was carrying 2,224 passengers and crew, struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912 and about 1,500 people lost their lives.

 Canals

• By 1916, canals and canalised rivers on the island of Ireland totalled 848 miles (or 1,365 km) and were mainly used for transporting goods. In 2016, the Royal and Grand Canals and the Barrow have about 358km of navigable waterways between them. The main uses now for these waterways are leisure and recreation.
• During its history, the canal network carried both passengers and freight. Before the introduction of rail and bus, transport passengers accounted for a considerable proportion of the canals' income.
• In 1916, the main freight items carried on canals were grain, agricultural produce and turf which were carried into Dublin and the barges then returned to areas outside of Dublin with coal and miscellaneous goods. Guinness was the last cargo to be carried by barge from James' Street Harbour to Limerick on 27 May, 1960.

Rail

Electric trams in Dublin and Cork

Cork had a fleet of 35 electric trams in 1901, while Dublin had a fleet of 330 by 1911. The trams in Dublin operated on lines which ran for 60 miles (95.6 km) along the city's roads. The Lucan tram was the only service in Dublin to keep running during the Easter Rising of 1916.

The Dublin United Tramways Company, now known as Córas Iompair Éireann (CIE), opened its first bus route in July 1925, where the first route was the number 43 to Killester. Buses progressively replaced the trams until the closure of the last tram route, the number 8 to Dalkey on 10 July, 1949. In 2013, a total of 192.5 million passengers were carried on scheduled public bus services in Dublin.

In June 2004, the tram (light rail) service returned to Dublin with the opening of the Luas. By 2013 the Luas Red and Green lines were 37.2km (23.1 miles) in length and they carried 30.5 million passengers.

Railways

In 1916, there were over 3,500 miles (5,632 km) of railways on the island of Ireland, transporting passengers and goods. Most of rural Ireland was within 10 to 12 miles of a local railway station.

There were 964 train stations on the island of Ireland in 1916. This number had decreased sharply by 2014, when there were 144 stations open in the Republic of Ireland.

In 2014, there was 1,481 miles (2,384 km) of railways tracks which carried 37.8 million passengers on Irish Rail and Dart services.

Photo:Train at Abbeyleix Railway Station, Co. Laois

Photo: Maurice Scally, aviator, pilots and civilians 1932

Aviation 

Although aviation transport was in its infancy in Ireland in the early 1900's, Denys Corbett Wilson, a pioneering Irish aviator, completed a 100 minute flight in April 1912 from Goodwich in Pembrokeshire to Crane near Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford.

After this, British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919, flying from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, Co. Galway in less than 72 hours.

There was also a small amount of mail carried on the flight, making it the first transatlantic airmail flight. By comparison, in 2014 a total of 217,125 flights passed through airports in the Republic of Ireland carrying 26.5 million passengers and 139,000 tonnes of freight.

Go to >>> Census and People of the 1916 Rising