Waterloo retains busiest station crown
London Waterloo remains Britain’s busiest station for the 16th year running, although the number of passengers between April 2019 and March 2020 was down 7.3 million compared with the previous 12-month period, to 86.9 million entries and exits.
Releasing its annual estimate of station usage figures on December 1, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) highlighted that the decrease was due to strike action and to COVID-19, which affected the final month of the figures.
“The dramatic drop in passenger numbers towards the end of March, due to COVID-19, explains much of the drop in usage compared with last year,” confirmed ORR Senior Statistical Analyst Jay Symonds.
He added: “With numbers staying at historically low levels during 2020, there is no doubt that next year’s figures will look a lot different.”
Britain’s least used station was Berney Arms, on the Reedham-Great Yarmouth route. This had 42 entries and exits, with usage down 90% compared with the previous year. This was due to the line being closed for resignalling. It reopened in February and was then hit again by the national lockdown.
Last year’s least used stations Denton and Stanlow & Thornton rose from 46 passengers to 92 and 82 respectively. The ORR recognises the least-used station often changes, because enthusiasts visit them once their status has been revealed.
The busiest station outside London -
indeed, the only non-London station in the top ten busiest - was Birmingham New Street.
Scotland’s busiest station was Glasgow Central (32,465,202 entries and exits), while Cardiff Central was top in Wales (12,670,920).
Four new stations were opened during 2019-20, with Meridian Water attracting 137,050 users, Warrington West 83,902, Robroyston 43,542, and Worcestershire Parkway 25,478.
London Paddington recorded the biggest percentage increase (17.5%), which the ORR attributed to the inclusion of journeys to/from Heathrow Airport.
LOTS of fun has been had over the past couple of weeks with Berney Arms, an obscure station in Norfolk named after a pub that closed years ago.
The Daily Telegraph ran a picture of the station because apparently fewer than one passenger per week had used the halt in the year to the end of March 2020.
The Guardian ran a similar article, with the same picture and noting that most of its patronage had been lost because of engineering works that had closed the line for ten months of the year. Moreover, the main local feature - a windmill belonging to English Heritage - is currently closed.
Richard Wellings, deputy director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a right-wing think tank, was ecstatic about the coverage. He tweeted: “There is a strong economic case for closing railway stations and lines which are poorly used and where the costs exceed the benefits. Some routes could be converted to roads, which would typically benefit far more travellers in rural areas.”
Wellings has form here, having in 2015 written a pamphlet with long-time anti-rail campaigner Paul Withrington entitled Paving over the Tracks: a Better Use of Britain’s Railways.
They argued that “there is strong evidence that allowing some commuter railways to be converted into busways would provide higher capacity at lower cost, reduce fares for passengers and cut subsidies from taxpayers. A related policy of phasing out government support for the railways could save around £6 billion a year.”
While none of this nonsense about rail conversion is taken particularly seriously, except by a group on the extreme right wing of the Conservative party, this sort of coverage about little-used stations helps to create a political climate where closing lines becomes more acceptable.
I was reminded by a reader, Chris Davis, that remarkably the plan to replace trains with buses at London Marylebone was actually seriously considered in the 1980s. A report recommending conversion of the station to coach use was produced for the National Bus Company by the eminent transport expert Professor Peter Hall, in 1983. Peter Parker, the chairman of British Rail at the time, felt he had to respond by commissioning a report from Coopers & Lybrand, examining seven routes in London for possible conversion.
The only route that appeared feasible was between Marylebone station and Northolt Junction, which would have resulted in the closure of four intermediate services. It was only after protests by a local rail travellers’ group, the threat of various legal actions, and a wider public outcry that the plan was eventually dropped.
This had been the culmination of the efforts of various campaigns - starting with the Railway Conversion League in the 1950s and running through to the work of Withrington’s Transport Watch, which was quite active in the early 2000s, but which is now largely defunct.
However, it is not inconceivable that such ideas could become mainstream again, given that usage of the railways has plummeted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, as we all know, the enormous bill for keeping the railways open displeases the Treasury.
Even if such conversions are unlikely to ever be realised, this kind of coverage is deeply damaging to the reputation of the railways.
So, why did these various journalists on the
and several other media
outlets suddenly focus their attention on a station which clearly they had never visited?
Step forward the Office of Rail and Road - the body which is supposed to be regulating the industry and looking after the interests of passengers and taxpayers. Its stated remit includes “protecting rail passengers” and “promoting investment in the rail network”.
The press release on station usage, issued on December 1, highlighted the fact that Britain’s busiest station (Waterloo) had 7.3 million fewer passengers in the year ending March 2020 than in the previous 12-month period - not unexpected, given that lockdown started on March 23, and even before that people concerned about COVID-19 were starting to work from home.
After a paragraph explaining the source of the figures, the third one read: “The least used station was Berney Arms in Norfolk, which recorded 42 entries and exits during the year. Usage at this station fell by 90% in 2019-20, due to the lines serving the station being closed most of the year for signalling upgrade work.
Last year’s least used stations, Denton and Stanlow & Thornton, increased from 46 to 92 and 82 respectively.”
Now, I recognise that putting out press releases for such an organisation is not a very exciting job, and therefore it may be tempting to spice up the publication of figures on passenger numbers going through stations to ensure coverage.
But the chaps and chapesses of the press office, and indeed people further up the hierarchy in ORR, should not be concerned with how many column inches they are getting in the national press. They must be canny enough to know that statistics on little-used stations are bound to be picked up in newsrooms as funny and quirky, and then be exploited by the likes of Richard Wellings (who, one could imagine, was as excited when seeing these figures as a 1950s schoolboy copping his final Pacific A4).
Just to make sure that it was the issue of the least-used stations that was picked up by the media, even the quote in the press release from ORR statistical analyst Jay Symonds focused on Berney Arms and the other little-used stations.
So, a station that was effectively out of action for ten months and which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere ends up attracting more attention than good news stories mentioned later in the press release, such as the fact that one of the new stations opened that year attracted 137,000 passengers.
Moreover, these statistics are essentially estimates based mostly on ticket sales. And, of course, these little-used stations do not have ticket machines or any staff. Therefore, passengers have to buy their tickets on the train - and this is a notoriously haphazard process, with conductors often unable to reach all passengers in time.
So, quite probably the figure of 42 which Wellings gleefully interpreted as “fewer than one a week” may well have been wrong by quite a large factor. Certainly, the equally silly point about Stanlow & Thornton doubling its patronage is.
Perhaps the good people at the ORR could have thought of their wider remit before allowing through such a press release. It’s not as if there aren’t a host of serious issues that could have been highlighted.
Most importantly, the year 2019-20, only slightly affected by COVID, will be the baseline for future use of the railway. For some years ahead (quite possibly for ever, if one is to be pessimistic), this will be the year of ‘peak rail’. Some mention of the implications of this might not have been out of place from an organisation with serious intent.
I am not being a miserable old git here. I like a laugh as much as anyone, but the railway faces a more uncertain future than at any time since Beeching, and it is not a good moment to highlight some nonsensical statistics.
Next year, perhaps, could the ORR desist from giving the opportunity for the industry’s enemies to make hay?