High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Friday, September 23, 2011
Road and Rail Freight
Road accounts for the vast majority of freight traffic, when this is measured on a "tonnes lifted in Scotland" basis: generally around 150-160 million tonnes in each year since 1988. Due to changes in the methodology and processing system used by the Department for Transport, figures for 2004 onwards are not comparable with pre-2004 figures.
Rail freight has increased slightly from the mid-1990s "all-time low", to around 9-14 million tonnes in recent years.
Most road hauls are short-distance. When measured in "tonne-kilometres" (which take account of the distance that the freight is carried, and are unaffected by freight being lifted several times en route), road is around 14-15 billion and rail about 4 billion. (Such figures are available for fewer years - e.g. only from 1996/97 for rail).
View chart data
Source: Scottish Transport Statistics
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