This chapter provides information about foreign and domestic freight traffic at Scottish ports and inland waterways by type of freight. Table 10.10 Vehicle and passenger traffic between Scotland and Northern Ireland 2. Over the past ten years, the total fell to about 94 million tonnes in 1989, and remained around that level for a few years before rising back to roughly 124 million tonnes in 1994. Over half of the total is exports, and about a third is domestic traffic going outwards.
Bulk fuel accounts for over three quarters of the cargo.
2.3 About 11.1 million tonnes of freight were carried on inland waterways in 1996. Over the past ten years the total has remained between 10 and 12 million tonnes. Over the same period the number of vehicles carried remained unchanged at just under 1.2 million. The longer-term trends are affected by the reduction in traffic that followed the opening of the Skye Bridge in 1995. Overall, passenger traffic on Caledonian MacBrayne increased slightly in 1997 over the previous year.