ORR station usage data

[whole diary]

[John D]

ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) has just published station usage data, and at the end has regional busiest stations

Bristol Temple Meads 10.9m
Bath Spa 9.5m
Swindon 3.2m
Exeter Central 3.0m
Exeter St Davids 2.9m

Others not in South West top 5
London Paddington 69.9m
Reading 14.3m
Cardiff Central 12.5m

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/msigcn24/station-usage-2024-25-statistical-release.pdf

For those who like to do pre-covid comparisons, the 2018-2019 report is here

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1668/estimates-of-station-usage-2018-19-factsheet.pdf

The link to ORR data page with links to to the data spreadsheets is here (not yet looked) but could check rank of your local station or its change

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/estimates-of-station-usage

Edit : just looked up some figures from 2018-19 which shows big jump on some stations eg
Bath Spa was 6.538m
Exeter St Davids 2.619m

But others less important eg
Reading was 17.08m 
Swindon was 3.75m
(perhaps few more trains need to skip these if usage down)

[lympstone_commuter]

I have just used the fresh data to update the maps of station usage here: https://timjupp.github.io/stations.html

"Map 1" gives the long-term trend since 1998.

"Map 2" shows (as black dots) the stations for which 2024 - 25 was their best ever year. There are a lot of them, especially in our region.

[Red Squirrel]

Yes - looking pretty good in the Bristol area too!

[IndustryInsider]

Some very impressive (and slightly surprising) leaps.

I guess the combination of the return of many office workers, the continued explosion of leisure travel and other more minor factors such as the end of industrial action have all played their part?

Imagine how the numbers would stack up if the railway were providing a better and more consistent service - cue Graham to talk about the slight drop at Melksham, but there are other examples too, such as the generally 'meh' service Chiltern now provide leading to stagnat figures at Oxford Parkway.

As for Bath Spa?  77th busiest station in the whole country.  I can only see one busier one (outside of central London) with only two platforms...can anyone guess which it is?

[grahame]

Some very impressive (and slightly surprising) leaps.

I guess the combination of the return of many office workers, the continued explosion of leisure travel and other more minor factors such as the end of industrial action have all played their part?

Imagine how the numbers would stack up if the railway were providing a better and more consistent service - cue Graham to talk about the slight drop at Melksham, but there are other examples too, such as the generally 'meh' service Chiltern now provide leading to stagnat figures at Oxford Parkway.

As for Bath Spa?  77th busiest station in the whole country.  I can only see one busier one (outside of central London) with only two platforms...can anyone guess which it is?

Separate thread ... in preparation  for local circulation

[John D]

As for Bath Spa?  77th busiest station in the whole country.  I can only see one busier one (outside of central London) with only two platforms...can anyone guess which it is?

Appears to be Moorfields in Liverpool

[IndustryInsider]

As for Bath Spa?  77th busiest station in the whole country.  I can only see one busier one (outside of central London) with only two platforms...can anyone guess which it is?

Appears to be Moorfields in Liverpool

Moorfields has three platforms. 

[bobm]

The link to ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) data page with links to to the data spreadsheets is here (not yet looked) but could check rank of your local station or its change

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/estimates-of-station-usage

Is it me - or does that link go to the previous year's data?

[ChrisB]

Estimates of station usage April 2024 to March 2025
Date published: 4 December 2025

[bobm]

Thanks - I had that heading too - but the data on the actual spreadsheet was headed last year.   It has updated in the last hour.

[lympstone_commuter]

As for Bath Spa?  77th busiest station in the whole country.  I can only see one busier one (outside of central London) with only two platforms...can anyone guess which it is?

This has been bugging me (and made me think rather too deeply about the definitions of "central London" and "two platforms")!

Is the answer Chelmsford?

It would be interesting to normalise the station usage data (by number of platforms and/or number of services that call there) to get a measure of intensity of station usage.

[eightonedee]

Going back to Grahame's first post and in particular -

But others less important eg
Reading was 17.08m
Swindon was 3.75m
(perhaps few more trains need to skip these if usage down)

..do bear in mind for Reading that it still has the second highest number of interchanges (4.1m) in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) outside London! This has to be added to the aggregate entries and exits used for the headline figures.

[IndustryInsider]

As for Bath Spa?  77th busiest station in the whole country.  I can only see one busier one (outside of central London) with only two platforms...can anyone guess which it is?

This has been bugging me (and made me think rather too deeply about the definitions of "central London" and "two platforms")!

Is the answer Chelmsford?

Yes!  Well done that man! 

[Timmer]

I would hazard a guess and say Winchester would be quite high up the list too.

[grahame]

I was interested in a past year to see which stations had the heaviest footfall per metre of operational platform and recall that Windsor and Eton Central bubbled up to being one of the busiest.  In GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) land, I would imagine that stations such as St Bureaux Ferry Road come towards the quietest; on a couple of uses the infrequent service there competes poorly with a frequent and quite fast bus service along the nearby main road.