It has been announced that the busiest station in Britain, London Waterloo, recorded a huge 7.3 million fewer passengers between April 2019 and March 2020 when compared to the previous year.
The numbers revealed by the Office of Rail and Road are an estimate of station usage statistics, which officially records the annual total of passenger entries and exits.
The least used station was found to be Berney Arms in Norfolk, which recorded just 42 entries and exits in the year.
Usage at this station fell by 90% due to work taking place to upgrade the signalling equipment.
Last year's least used stations, Denton and Stanlow & Thornton, both increased from 46 to 92 and 82 respectively.
London Waterloo was at the top of the chart for the 16th year running, with 86,903,518 entries and exits, despite the dramatic drop in numbers.
On the other end of the scale, 16 stations recorded less than 100 entries.
Four stations opened in the year, bringing the total to 2,567 at the end of March 2020. The new stations were Meridian Water, Robroyston, Warrington West and Worcestershire Parkway. These new stations had 137,050; 43,542; 83,902 and 25,478 entries and exits respectively.
Glasgow Central remained the busiest station in Scotland, with 32.5 million passengers, but saw a drop of more than 331,000.
The biggest increase was seen at London Paddington, seeing 17.5% more passengers due to the inclusion of journeys to and from Heathrow Airport.
Jay Symonds, ORR senior statistical analyst, said: “The dramatic drop in passenger numbers towards the end of March due to Covid-19 explains much of the drop in usage compared to last year. Despite this, Waterloo remains top, but we saw a change in the least used station with Berney Arms taking the spot from Denton and Stanlow & Thornton.
“With numbers staying at historically low levels during 2020, there is no doubt that next year's figures will look a lot different.”
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I still think that London Waterloo will thrive with South Western Railway to introduce the Class 701 “Arterio” Aventra units in service from early next year. With the Class 455 and Class 456 to be scrapped. And Class 458 to be sent for scrap or cascaded to Southern and Class 707 to be cascaded to Southeastern.
Time to save!