15.12.15
How many passengers used your station last year?
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has published its latest annual dataset on station usage, which analyses ticket sales and travel cards to assess how many people are travelling to and from, or interchanging at, specific stations.
This year, the largest increase in estimated ‘entries and exits’ between 2013-14 and 2014-15 was at Energlyn & Churchill Park in Caerphilly, Wales. As a result of higher demand, the station, which opened in December 2013, saw a whopping 335% rise in usage.
But the second largest percentage rise was perhaps more impressive, with the 272% increase in passenger take-up at East Sussex’s Pevensey Bay likely linked to more tourist traffic as opposed to any changes to services and timetables.
On the other end of the scale, Southend Victoria, the east terminus of the Shenfield to Southend line, saw the largest decrease in station usage, down 64% compared to 2013-14. This was, however, the result of better methodology for the distribution of Southend branch line season tickets and count-based distribution at Southend stations. In fact, most of the top 10 increases or decreases in passenger usage were, thankfully, usually related to better timetabling and passenger allocation.
As expected, the most used station in England, Scotland and Wales was London’s Waterloo, with almost 100 million passengers last year. In striking comparison, the most used station outside London, Birmingham New Street, only saw 35 million entries and exits.
Overall, station usage increased by 4.5% to 2.79 billion compared to last year.
You can check out the data collated as an infographic here.
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(Top image c. Alvey and Towers)