Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that, at the end of December 2018, total number of licensed motor vehicles edged down by 0.6% year-on-year to 240,145, of which light motorcycles (26,256) decreased by 10.5%, whereas light automobiles (108,442) and heavy motorcycles (97,822) inched up by 0.8% and 0.9% respectively. New registration of motor vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2018 declined by 27.2% year-on-year to 3,622, and that for the whole year of 2018 dropped by 13.7% to 14,509, with heavy motorcycles (7,374) falling by 25.4%.
A total of 3,467 traffic accidents were recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018, down by 4.5% year-on-year, and number of victims was 1,165. In 2018, number of traffic accidents dropped by 6.5% year-on-year to 13,764, resulting in 4,390 casualties and 10 of them were killed.
Cross-border vehicular traffic grew by 4.4% year-on-year to 1,287,805 trips in the fourth quarter. For the whole year of 2018, cross-border vehicular traffic rose by 2.3% to 4,927,368 trips; those passing through the Checkpoint of Cotai (30.5% of total) recorded an increase of 16.5%, while those going through the Checkpoint of Border Gate (68.2%) saw a decrease of 3.6%. Meanwhile, vehicular trips passing through the Checkpoint of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge totalled 23,574.
In the fourth quarter, passenger ferry trips between Macao and Mainland China and between Macao and Hong Kong went down by 5.5% year-on-year to 32,846, of which those to and from Hong Kong (27,560) decreased by 4.2%. For the whole year of 2018, ferry trips between Macao and Mainland China and between Macao and Hong Kong totalled 131,740, down by 5.1% year-on-year; those to and from Hong Kong (111,186) dropped by 1.9%.
Commercial flights at the Macau International Airport totalled 16,320 trips in the fourth quarter of 2018, up by 12.5% year-on-year. In 2018, commercial flights increased by 13.1% year-on-year to 62,048 trips; those to and from Mainland China and Thailand showed respective growth of 20.9% and 20.8%, whereas those to and from the Republic of Korea and Vietnam fell by 15.5% and 8.8% respectively. Helicopter flights between Macao and Mainland China and between Macao and Hong Kong dropped by 5.3% year-on-year to 3,640 trips in the fourth quarter, yet those for the whole year of 2018 rose by 2.7% to 13,089 trips.
In the fourth quarter of 2018, gross weight of containerized cargo by land surged by 114.2% year-on-year to 4,934 tonnes, and seaborne containerized cargo rose by 20.9% to 46,179 tonnes. Seaborne container throughput grew by 6.4% to 37,722 TEU, equivalent to 25,365 containers handled, up by 3.8%. For the whole year of 2018, gross weight of containerized cargo by land rose by 15.5% year-on-year to 16,043 tonnes, of which cargo passing through the Checkpoint of Cotai (14,856 tonnes) accounted for 92.6%; gross weight of seaborne containerized cargo increased by 6.6% year-on-year to 171,026 tonnes, with 52.4% (89,535 tonnes) passing through the Inner Harbour. Seaborne container throughput amounted to 138,639 TEU, equivalent to 94,254 containers handled, up by 6.8% and 4.4% respectively.
The Macau International Airport handled 13,384 tonnes of air cargo in the fourth quarter of 2018, up by 21.8% year-on-year. For the whole year of 2018, air cargo increased by 10.6% year-on-year to 41,481 tonnes, with the gross weight of inward cargo (7,083 tonnes) and outward cargo (27,521 tonnes) rising by 6.6% and 17.8% respectively. Meanwhile, the gross weight of transit cargo (6,877 tonnes) decreased by 8.2%.
As at the end of December 2018, there were 124,101 fixed-line telephone subscribers, down by 5.3% year-on-year. Number of mobile phone subscribers fell by 3.0% to 2,181,194, with stored-value GSM card subscribers (1,417,109) making up 65.0% of the total. Internet subscribers totalled 423,507, an increase of 6.8%. In the fourth quarter of 2018, the duration of internet usage reached 341 million hours, up by 6.9%; the cumulative duration of usage in 2018 grew by 2.2% to 1.27 billion hours.