The line graph below depicts the comparison of the amount of goods transported in million tonnes, using four different transport methods (road,water,rail,pipeline) in the UK from 1974 to 2002.
Overall, all four shipping methods experienced an upward trend despite some considerable fluctuations. Although, there were higher quantity of goods transported using railway compared to water at the beginning, their position reversed at the end of the period and water became the second most used transport mode.
In detail, road is the most used transport method of all the time, about 70 million tonnes of goods are sent by road in 1974, though this figure saw a slight dip in 1978, the quantities managed to rise steadily until early 1990, where the numbers declined before recovering to around 100 million tonnes at 2002. In contrast, the pipeline method experienced a gradual increase within first few years and leveled off at just over 20 miilion tonnes after 1994.
For the other two methods, the water mode overtook the rail mode in 1978, from this point the former generally increased while, the latter marginally fluctuated in the following year, finishing with just over 60 million tonnes and a little over 40 million tonnes, respectively.