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ORR estimates of station usage 2024/25
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On 4 December ORR should publish this, or something like it, for 2024/25:
ORR will make the origin-destination matrix available in their rail data marketplace, but, as far as I can tell, they don't publish it in full on their own website. There could be a delay before the origin-destination matrix appears on third party websites.
Estimates of station usage
Annual estimates of the number of entries/exits and interchanges at each station in Great Britain.
ORR will make the origin-destination matrix available in their rail data marketplace, but, as far as I can tell, they don't publish it in full on their own website. There could be a delay before the origin-destination matrix appears on third party websites.
Snow1964
Established Member
The new 2024/25 figures due in about hours time
For those who like to do comparisons with pre-covid, these are links to April 2018 - March 2019. (following year March 2020 was lockdowns)
Link to the 2018-19 data spreadsheet bottom of this page
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Data now available
Waterloo, has gone up from 4th to 2nd
Liverpool Street is top again
Birmingham New Street is busiest outside London
Reading (which was in 2018-19 stats, no longer in top 10 outside London)
Elton and Orston is least used
For those who like to do comparisons with pre-covid, these are links to April 2018 - March 2019. (following year March 2020 was lockdowns)
Link to the 2018-19 data spreadsheet bottom of this page
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Data now available
Waterloo, has gone up from 4th to 2nd
Liverpool Street is top again
Birmingham New Street is busiest outside London
Reading (which was in 2018-19 stats, no longer in top 10 outside London)
Elton and Orston is least used
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One of the features of the News Release is the map that shows the 5 busiest stations in each region. Indirectly, this also shows all of the stations outside London with more than 10 million entries and exits. This year there are 18 such stations, up from 14 last year. The stations that don't appear in the top 10 outside London are as follows, with 2024/25 total followed by 2023/24 total in brackets):
Reading 14.3m (13.5m)
Cardiff Central 12.5 m (11.5m)
Bristol Temple Meads 10.9m (10.2m)
Cambridge 10.6m (10.0m)
Newcastle 10.5m (9.1m)
York 10.5m (9.2m)
Sheffield 10.3m (9.4m)
Stansted Airport 10.1m (9.3m)
Reading 14.3m (13.5m)
Cardiff Central 12.5 m (11.5m)
Bristol Temple Meads 10.9m (10.2m)
Cambridge 10.6m (10.0m)
Newcastle 10.5m (9.1m)
York 10.5m (9.2m)
Sheffield 10.3m (9.4m)
Stansted Airport 10.1m (9.3m)
Reading is now 11th, having been overtaken by Liverpool Lime Street.
Snow1964
Established Member
Just been sent this link to a website by a senior Mathematics lecturer called Tim Jupp, shows busiest year for stations on a zoomable map, with those in black being busiest in most recent year. Can click on stations to see changes
Lots are now busiest in South West, North Wales and North East, north Midlands and Anglia coast.
No wonder GWR is suffering big crowding (and looks like it could do with dozens more DMUs to supplement 175s). Does DfT not actually react to these numbers.
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Lots are now busiest in South West, North Wales and North East, north Midlands and Anglia coast.
No wonder GWR is suffering big crowding (and looks like it could do with dozens more DMUs to supplement 175s). Does DfT not actually react to these numbers.
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H F Stephens
Member
Inevitably, it'll be impossible to ascertain what impact split ticketing has on all these stations' figures, which could be particularly consequential given that they are all served by CrossCountry Trains.
It won't be possible to quantify this, but the detailed origin and destination matrix data may give some clues.
Though split ticketing will have an impact on the absolute figures, I should have thought that by now they would have less impact on the fairly significant increases at all of those stations (ie by now it’s hardly a new or unknown concept).
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Almost impossible to quantify and certainly fuel for a lot of disputes but looking at the top end, I wonder what the biggest “discrepancy” between population and station usage is? My own local station manages 6.5M with a population of about 95K. (Recent visitors to Bath will suggest most of those users are travelling on 3 weekends before Xmas!)
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Snow1964
Established Member
You do get interesting figures compared to 2018-19 (last full year pre-Covid) rather than one year change
eg
Reading was 17.08m (and debatable if it is lost around 20% should a few more trains nowadays skip it, especially when Old Oak Common opens)
Cardiff Central was 14.02m
Bristol Temple Meads was 11.37m (busiest 100% diesel station)
Cambridge was 11.98m
Newcastle was 8.91m (up quite a bit)
York was 9.99m
Sheffield was 9.91m
Stansted Airport was 9.77m
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Bath Spa was 6.54m pre covid 2018-19 so virtually unchanged (although the month long closure in Westbury area would have dented this years figures)
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In 2024/25 Cambridge was significantly affected by engineering work associated with the construction of the new Cambridge South station. I have a list of 12 weekend closures of both routes to/from London between April and November 2024. There was also a full Christmas/New Year closure, if I remember right this ran through to 5 January 2025. Some of the closures affected the north end too because of the separate Cambridge resignalling project. I estimate that the London routes were closed on about 10% of days in 2024/25.
This is possibly why Chelmsford-Liverpool Street climbed above Cambridge-Kings Cross in the top 10 flows with at least one station outside London, which is otherwise in the same order in 2024/25 as in 2023/24.
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Ashington had 130,630 passengers; assuming that can be counted as a third of the year (it was slightly less than four months, but I'd guess the initial opening shortly before Christmas to have been busier than normal), that's around 400,000 entries and exits per year. I know the Northumberland line hasn't been struggling for passengers, but that's less than I'd have expected given that Redcar Central and Hexham are at that mark and Morpeth at 622,000 (up from 519,000, which I really wasn't expecting).
Overall numbers for Newcastle have gone up a lot though (8.82 mn in 2019-20 and 9.15 mn in 2023-24 to 10.55 mn; +20% / +15%), whilst Sheffield's up 9% from last year and only up 2% from 2019-20.
Overall numbers for Newcastle have gone up a lot though (8.82 mn in 2019-20 and 9.15 mn in 2023-24 to 10.55 mn; +20% / +15%), whilst Sheffield's up 9% from last year and only up 2% from 2019-20.
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Killingworth
Established Member
My line is Sheffield - Manchester along the Hope Valley.
Sheffield's passenger numbers seem to have reached an all time high, marginally above their pre-Covid peak in 2019-20.
Manchester Piccadilly's numbers are still well down on their 2019-20 peak.
Smaller stations from Sheffield to Edale are all showing sustained growth in numbers, all seeing record highs.
Chinley has almost recovered its past peak but stations from New Mills Central into Piccadilly are still experiencing massive drops (not helped by the landslide near New Mills in the latest year).
An east - west divide!
Generalisations about national passenger numbers need to beware of such local factors. Clearly a lot has changed in the last 5 years which may require longer term plans to be reconsidered for such factors across the land.
Sheffield's passenger numbers seem to have reached an all time high, marginally above their pre-Covid peak in 2019-20.
Manchester Piccadilly's numbers are still well down on their 2019-20 peak.
Smaller stations from Sheffield to Edale are all showing sustained growth in numbers, all seeing record highs.
Chinley has almost recovered its past peak but stations from New Mills Central into Piccadilly are still experiencing massive drops (not helped by the landslide near New Mills in the latest year).
An east - west divide!
Generalisations about national passenger numbers need to beware of such local factors. Clearly a lot has changed in the last 5 years which may require longer term plans to be reconsidered for such factors across the land.
Unsurprisingly, outer commuter stations, at least northwest of London, are up from last year but still below 2019-20 (percentages of 2024-25).
The general trend's around eight journeys last year for every nine which were made in 2019-20, and around ten for every nine made in 2023-24.
I'd guess Bedford having fallen so little is due to EMR Connect having started, and Aylesbury due to Chiltern cuts (I could say people working at home, but I wouldn't expect St. Albans to be massively different there and that's had passenger numbers hold up better).
| 2019-20 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | |
| Watford Junction | 8.44 mn (122%) | 6.48 mn (93%) | 6.94 mn |
| Hemel Hempstead | 1.89 mn (117%) | 1.44 mn (89%) | 1.61 mn |
| St. Albans City | 7.38 mn (111%) | 6.32 mn (95%) | 6.67 mn |
| Bedford | 3.87 mn (103%) | 3.25 mn (86%) | 3.76 mn |
| Milton Keynes Central | 6.94 mn (114%) | 5.56 mn (91%) | 6.10 mn |
| Aylesbury | 1.21 mn (134%) | 0.85 mn (94%) | 0.90 mn |
The general trend's around eight journeys last year for every nine which were made in 2019-20, and around ten for every nine made in 2023-24.
I'd guess Bedford having fallen so little is due to EMR Connect having started, and Aylesbury due to Chiltern cuts (I could say people working at home, but I wouldn't expect St. Albans to be massively different there and that's had passenger numbers hold up better).
Interesting that Brighton is now a busier station than Reading. I'm sure that wasn't the case in the past.
Also Leeds - York listed as one of the busiest flows outside of London. I suppose Leeds - Manchester is split between the Vic and Pic.
Also Leeds - York listed as one of the busiest flows outside of London. I suppose Leeds - Manchester is split between the Vic and Pic.
Likewise Edinburgh - Glasgow Queen St is listed but I wonder if Edinburgh - Glasgow Central was included, and if so, would it have overtaken Birmingham - Coventry.
They are on the same ticket aswell
Brighton was slightly ahead in 2019-20 (17.36 mn vs 17.08 mn); last year it was 14.55 mn at Brighton vs 13.49 mn at Reading.
Whitechapel is the 2nd busiest interchange after Clapham Junction. Busier than Farringdon. Quite a thing when you consider that it apparently took local authority pressure to get it included as an Elizabeth Line station.
BBC News now has a story on today's data:
www.bbc.co.uk
London Liverpool Street named UK's busiest station again
Some 98 million passengers entered and exited the station until the end of March, the regulator says.
www.bbc.co.uk
Admittedly it was in November (and anecdotes ≠ data), but when I went there on a Saturday last year, there were at most two other passengers on the bus, and neither got off there.
Perhaps we are starting to see some results from the longstanding and ongoing campaigns to give Liverpool appropriate train services?
Thanks for passing this on. A fascinating presentation of a huge volume of data.
As I'm sure Mr Jupp would agree, all data needs to be treated sceptically. A clear example is from his graph found by clicking on Pye Corner. I think He has used a logarithmic scale in order to draw the annual growth (straight) line of best fit, showing it as 11.46%. But if we remove the 2015 figure (which represents the opening months only) even by eye we can see that the line would be far less steep - the annual growth much less.
[For example, a doubling in 10 years is not an average annual growth of 10%, it is closer to 7.117...% then compounded. With a linear scale, the average usage figures for each year would generate a curve, by using a logarithmic scale, the figures would lie in a straight line]
brad465
Veteran Member
I hope that pre-covid years don't disappear from summary sites like RailwayData and even Wikipedia as more releases come online, as the pre-covid comparison remains valuable.
Interesting. Really St Albans is more stable because commuting is easy - fast trains, turn up and go frequency, 15 mins or so. Aylesbury is a put put diesel, takes forever, stops at half of the tube stations.... barely comparable - sadly for them. Watford and Bedford similarly are on mainlines and with fast options.
I'm surprised at Hemel's figures overall, quite low.
MK - I am sure people who live further are also less likely to be chomping at the bit to return 5 days, if they have a choice - but that growth is likely due to impressive population growth YoY. And an additional Avanti (although it lost Southern, if that made a dent at all)
2019-20's gone for the info box on Wikipedia for Brighton, although at least the information wasn't difficult to find.
A less frequent service to London than the others except Aylesbury and being on the edge of the urban area with a relatively poor bus service can't help much, with the two combined maybe making driving to other stations (normally Radlett or Rickmansworth, in my case) more common than from Bedford or Milton Keynes to elsewhere.
YorksLad12
Established Member
Best thing to do is download table 1410 every year. It's changed in format quite a bit over the years, but the basic numbers are there. My collection goes back to 2005-06, when there was a significant methodology change. Updating my own map/table will give me something to do this Sunday while avoiding the F1 result until Channel 4 shows the highlights
Kite159
Veteran Member
With the rise of split ticketing on apps like Trainline, such stats can become meaningless. Especially when you start counting London Underground journeys due to the stations having a common gateline 
I.e. A little village station getting a massive boost due to it being a split point, even though hardly anybody boards or alights it's usage increases.
I.e. A little village station getting a massive boost due to it being a split point, even though hardly anybody boards or alights it's usage increases.
Alex365Dash
Member
With Crawley’s local borough population of 124,008 (as of 2021), Gatwick Airport has to be at the top with 21.2 million entries and exits!
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