The line graph illustrates the number of journeys made by passengers on three railway systems in Great Britain from 1950 to 2004/5.
Overall, all three networks showed an upward trend throughout the period, with the National Rail and London Underground following similar patterns. Meanwhile, the light rail and metro systems, introduced in the 1960s, remained less widely used, despite steady growth.
In detail, the National Rail Network began with the highest usage, at around one billion journeys in 1950. Over the next three decades, this figure declined gradually, bottoming out at approximately 750 million in the early 1980s. The London Underground followed a broadly similar trajectory, though the changes were less pronounced, with journey numbers falling slightly from about 700 million to 500 million over the same period. Both networks then recovered steadily, with the National Rail surpassing its initial level to reach just over 1.1 billion, while the Underground rose to nearly one billion by 2004/05.
By comparison, after their introduction in the 1960s, the light rail and metro systems transported significantly fewer passengers than the other two networks, carrying no more than around 10 million annually during the first 15 years. However, from 1980 onward, usage began to rise steadily, reaching nearly 200 million by 2004/05.