The provided graph depicts the changes in the amounts of goods (in million tonnes) being tranported in UK from 1974 to 2002 through 4 distinct means of transportation.
Initially, by road, the amount of items transported is almost stable from 1974 to 1982, reaching 70 million tonnes. After that, there’s a gradual increase in the quantity being transported, approaching 100 million tonnes by 2002. For goods transported by rail, at first, it was approximately 40 million tonnes in 1974, and gradually diminished to 30 million tonnes in 1985 before the fluctuation that took place until the quantity is amounted to approximately 28 million tons in 1995. Then, a substantial increase to 41 million tons occurred in 2002.
For goods transported by water, the quantity transported was 39 million tons in 1974, then it suddenly increased to approach 55 million tonnes in 1982, before the plateau stage that occurred till 1994. After that the amount slightly decreased before a dramatice increase, amounting to 65 million tonnes in 2002. On the other hand, the items transported by pipeline is constantly increasing, as it went up from less than 5 million tonnes in 1974 to exceed 20 million tonnes in 1994, and the amount remained almost constant until 2002.
Overall, statistics proved that the most common way for transporting goods is by road, and the least used method is through pipeline. All of the is dramatically increased through the specified period except the rail way as the quantities is almost equal in 1974 and 2002.