Station usage 2022-23 published

Today the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has published the latest edition of the annual Estimates of station usage (covering journeys on Great Britain’s rail network between April 2022 and March 2023). At Steer, we are incredibly proud of the long-standing relationship with the ORR that we have developed over the last decade in producing these statistics, implementing improvements to them and supporting the process of their designation as official National Statistics.

2022/23 saw some significant changes to the rail network with the full opening of the Elizabeth Line through central London as well as the opening of 8 [1] new stations. This has led to changes in travel patterns in the capital which are still evolving, including the transfer of journeys from London Underground [2] to the rail network (on the Elizabeth Line) with an associated impact on the station usage statistics.

The overall increase in station usage is 37% since 2021/22 which reflects the impact of the Elizabeth Line but also the continuation of the recovery of rail usage following the pandemic. As a result, there are some big ‘movers’ in the top 10 stations in 2022/23 with Waterloo being toppled from its position as most used station in 2021/22 falling to number 3 with Liverpool Street and Paddington rising to numbers one and two respectively. Tottenham Court Road (Elizabeth Line) debuts in the top 10 most used stations at number 7 with Farringdon, Whitechapel and Stratford all seeing significant increases in recorded usage as a result of the Elizabeth Line. Other trends in usage include significant year-on-year increases on some rural lines in Wales, reflecting service increases after the reductions during the pandemic and continued recovery in international travel contributing to strong year-on-year growth at many of GB’s airport stations.

The least used station each year always receives a lot of attention although in recent years any analysis needs to consider station closures and service reductions at stations as a result of the pandemic. In 2021/22 the least used station (which was not closed) was Elton & Orston in rural Nottinghamshire and in 2022/23 it remains very sparsely used, placing as the 4^th least used station this year. The least used station in 2022/23 is Teesside Airport which was closed in May 2022 to undertake urgent repairs with the least used station that was not closed being Denton in Manchester.

As always, we look forward to which stations make the headlines this year and the general public interest and fascinating conversations generated by the publication of these statistics.

_______________________________________________________

[1] Five of these stations are in central London on the Elizabeth Line (Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Woolwich, Custom House and Canary Wharf) with the other 3 being Reston, Barking Riverside and Inverness Airport

[2] Journeys on London Underground are not included in the Estimates of Station Usage or the associated Origin Destination Matrix (ODM)