Stations with most trains for fewest passengers, and vice versa

S&CLER · 22 Feb 2020

Does anyone know how to access a table or tables ranking stations in order of most use (number of passenger entries and exits), busy-ness (number of trains) and passenger to service ratio?

I looked up my local station on a website (www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=SOP), and found that it was the 124th in passenger numbers (entries and exits), the 237th busiest (1381 trains per week) and the 88th most used (over 11,000 passengers a day or 57.65 passengers per train starting or ending their journey there). But I couldn't see a way to get to any tables ranking all stations under these 3 headings.

It would be interesting to know the station with the best service for the fewest passengers and the one with the most passengers for the sparsest service. Clapham Junction was no surprise as the busiest station with over 16,000 scheduled trains per week.

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Brissle Girl · 22 Feb 2020

Breich could be a candidate with 342 ons and offs (having risen from 48 two years earlier) and an hourly service. Though admittedly there is now a much better service than the period to which those figures relate, so not an entirely fair comparison.

kieron · 22 Feb 2020

There's a spreadsheet giving how many people are believed to use each station on the ORR web site. I don't think the number of trains which visit each station over a time period is calculated by anyone, but you can work it out from data made available to the public.

The stations which have most passengers per train will mostly be the busiest stations in terms of passenger number alone. It's not unusual to see a long train start from (say) London Waterloo, and for it to be full and standing before it sets off. I'm sure there are outliers, though.

S&CLER · 22 Feb 2020

kieron said:
There's a spreadsheet giving how many people are believed to use each station on the ORR web site. I don't think the number of trains which visit each station over a time period is calculated by anyone, but you can work it out from data made available to the public.

The stations which have most passengers per train will mostly be the busiest stations in terms of passenger number alone. It's not unusual to see a long train start from (say) London Waterloo, and for it to be full and standing before it sets off. I'm sure there are outliers, though.

I've done a bit more searching, and find that King's Cross has the 2nd highest passenger to service ratio, at 244 pax per train. Waterloo was 4th. I still can't find the number one. The figures for train numbers per week are said to be based on May 2018.

Mal75756 · 22 Feb 2020

apologies if anyone has asked this before but I have been looking and cannot find. Is there a table/list that shows number of trains per day/week/year at each station and therefore see the busiest stations for train movements. Thanks

S&CLER · 22 Feb 2020

Mal75756 said:
apologies if anyone has asked this before but I have been looking and cannot find. Is there a table/list that shows number of trains per day/week/year at each station and therefore see the busiest stations for train movements. Thanks

Go to the railwaydata.co.uk site I quoted in my original post, and you will find stations arranged in alphabetical order; by clicking on any station name you can find the number of trains/week for May 2018, but as I said, there doesn't seem to be a way to get to a table ranking all stations.

Mal75756 · 22 Feb 2020

S&CLER said:
Go to the railwaydata.co.uk site I quoted in my original post, and you will find stations arranged in alphabetical order; by clicking on any station name you can find the number of trains/week for May 2018, but as I said, there doesn't seem to be a way to get to a table ranking all stations.

Thank you for your response.

imagination · 22 Feb 2020

S&CLER said:
I've done a bit more searching, and find that King's Cross has the 2nd highest passenger to service ratio, at 244 pax per train. Waterloo was 4th. I still can't find the number one. The figures for train numbers per week are said to be based on May 2018.

Bordesley is 1st. Which cheats because football trains carry most of the passengers but aren't included in the calling trains count.

http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=BBS

SteveM70 · 22 Feb 2020

Surely this data is flawed if it only counts entry/exit and not passengers merely changing trains?

London Trains · 22 Feb 2020

Stanlow and Thornton has the 3rd lowest passenger to service ratio. I cant find the lowest 2 after a good while searching.

StephenHunter · 22 Feb 2020

Emerson Park on the Romford to Upminster line is a decent candidate for the Greater London title; four trains every hour and from my own personal experience, pretty quiet even in peak times.

http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=EMP

Lampshade · 22 Feb 2020

Birkbeck for most trains/fewest passengers? Half hourly 8 car service, 0.137m passengers per year.

London Trains · 22 Feb 2020

StephenHunter said:
Emerson Park on the Romford to Upminster line is a decent candidate for the Greater London title; four trains every hour and from my own personal experience, pretty quiet even in peak times.

http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=EMP

Birkbeck beats this, being the 1381st highest passenger to service ratio, with 2 trains an hour each way so 4 trains an hour.

London Trains · 22 Feb 2020

Lampshade said:
Birkbeck for most trains/fewest passengers? Half hourly 8 car service, 0.137m passengers per year.

Beat me to it

bspahh · 22 Feb 2020

Birkbeck is ranked 1381st out of 1767 at http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=BIK

These are the stations with the lowest ranking that I can find. I downloaded the data for the 1250 least used stations from the 2018-2019 figures. I couldn't see the 1767th least used one. I suspect it might be a new station.

This has the ranking, URL, number of entries/exits and the number of trains per week:

Code:

1763    http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=KIL    168     50    Kildonan
1763    http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=BYL    122     12    Barry Links
1763    http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=SCT    238     44    Scotscalder
1764    http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=IBM    506    249    IBM
1765    http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=SNT     46     36    Stanlow & Thornton
1766    http://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=RBS    360     24    British Steel Redcar

The ranking is based on the "number of passengers per service" For British Steel Redcar that is 0.03, but with 360 passengers entries and exits per year from 24 trains a week, I would have thought it would be 360/(24*52) or 0.29 passengers per train, when the WWW page quotes 0.03 instead.

splashoutradio · 23 Feb 2020

Mal75756 said:
apologies if anyone has asked this before but I have been looking and cannot find. Is there a table/list that shows number of trains per day/week/year at each station and therefore see the busiest stations for train movements. Thanks

Using the first week of the Summer 2018 timetable (engineering works excluded), the top 10 stations for weekly traffic were as follows:
Clapham Junction - 16,069 services per week; London Bridge - 12,943; London Waterloo - 9,827; London Victoria - 9,115; London Liverpool St - 8,697; Glasgow Central - 8,158; Manchester Piccadilly - 7,423; Leeds - 6,993; Birmingham New St - 6,757; Stratford 6,417

bspahh said:
The ranking is based on the "number of passengers per service" For British Steel Redcar that is 0.03, but with 360 passengers entries and exits per year from 24 trains a week, I would have thought it would be 360/(24*52) or 0.29 passengers per train, when the WWW page quotes 0.03 instead.

You're absolutely right, it should be 0.29 :oops:

I'd made a mistake in the calculation of 'passenger to service ratio' but have now corrected it. Thanks for the heads up :smile:

In the hope that it will be of some interest, attached is a 'Top & Bottom 15' for passenger to service ratio.

S&CLER · 23 Feb 2020

splashoutradio said:
Using the first week of the Summer 2018 timetable (engineering works excluded), the top 10 stations for weekly traffic were as follows:
Clapham Junction - 16,069 services per week; London Bridge - 12,943; London Waterloo - 9,827; London Victoria - 9,115; London Liverpool St - 8,697; Glasgow Central - 8,158; Manchester Piccadilly - 7,423; Leeds - 6,993; Birmingham New St - 6,757; Stratford 6,417

You're absolutely right, it should be 0.29
I'd made a mistake in the calculation of 'passenger to service ratio' but have now corrected it. Thanks for the heads up

In the hope that it will be of some interest, attached is a 'Top & Bottom 15' for passenger to service ratio.

Very many thanks. This is exactly what I was looking for when I started this thread. Also emailed your website, which has lots of fascinating stuff, to ask if the full table could be made accessible. Something is wrong with the train numbers data for Canada Water, it seems.

bspahh · 23 Feb 2020

splashoutradio said:
You're absolutely right, it should be 0.29
I'd made a mistake in the calculation of 'passenger to service ratio' but have now corrected it. Thanks for the heads up

In the hope that it will be of some interest, attached is a 'Top & Bottom 15' for passenger to service ratio.

I had guessed at IBM being one of the quiet ones.

Thanks.

Can you also work out the ratio of annual passengers per Vicki foot of platform?

London Trains · 23 Feb 2020

splashoutradio said:
Using the first week of the Summer 2018 timetable (engineering works excluded), the top 10 stations for weekly traffic were as follows:
Clapham Junction - 16,069 services per week; London Bridge - 12,943; London Waterloo - 9,827; London Victoria - 9,115; London Liverpool St - 8,697; Glasgow Central - 8,158; Manchester Piccadilly - 7,423; Leeds - 6,993; Birmingham New St - 6,757; Stratford 6,417

You're absolutely right, it should be 0.29
I'd made a mistake in the calculation of 'passenger to service ratio' but have now corrected it. Thanks for the heads up

In the hope that it will be of some interest, attached is a 'Top & Bottom 15' for passenger to service ratio.

So Stanlow & Thornton is lowest on this list, but was 3rd lowest on the website, is this an error or is it because new stations with no service yet were entered?

philthetube · 24 Feb 2020

Heysham port has to be up there for the most passenger fewest trains title.

Esker-pades · 24 Feb 2020

philthetube said:
Heysham port has to be up there for the most passenger fewest trains title.

Not even close. 1 train per day, 7698 passengers last year. 7698/365 gives just over 21 passengers per train.

NorthOxonian · 24 Feb 2020

philthetube said:
Heysham port has to be up there for the most passenger fewest trains title.

My guess would have been Whitby, but even that is pretty low down the list. One interesting extension (though very difficult) would compare passenger usage to capacity - it isn't really fair to compare Whitby's 23 passengers per service with Kings Cross' 250, because services at the latter can hold far greater numbers of passengers.

The number 1 station isn't entirely surprising when you think about it - not only is it only served for special events, but it is also in a metropolitan county so many passengers will hold season tickets valid there anyway because of their commute to work, reducing the need to buy separate tickets to get to Bordesley. I do wonder how they obtained the figure for entries and exits though, if season tickets were heavily used - would they need to survey passengers?

splashoutradio · 24 Feb 2020

London Trains said:
So Stanlow & Thornton is lowest on this list, but was 3rd lowest on the website, is this an error or is it because new stations with no service yet were entered?

There was a slight error in the way the Passenger to Service Ratio was calculated, which meant positions may have been a little out for some stations, but this has since been rectified.

NorthOxonian said:
I do wonder how they obtained the figure for entries and exits though, if season tickets were heavily used - would they need to survey passengers?

The station usage figures are supplied by the Office of Road and Rail and are based on ticket sales. The full details of how they calculate them is outlined in this document. And whilst the estimates are getting better all the time, it's safe to say they're not 100% fool-proof.

bspahh said:
Can you also work out the ratio of annual passengers per Vicki foot of platform?

Love this idea! It would also go some way to answering @NorthOxonian 's question regarding "passenger usage to capacity."

Bletchleyite · 24 Feb 2020

If you mean the lowest number calculated as [number of entries/exits] / [number of trains per day], I wonder if one of the quieter Merseyrail stations might actually be it due to the very large number in the denominator, with most stations getting 4tph.

With the ratio the other way round possibly something in Scotland e.g. on the Highland Main Line maybe, or the WHL? Lowish frequency but plenty of passengers, in summer at least?

S&CLER · 24 Feb 2020

Bletchleyite said:
If you mean the lowest number calculated as [number of entries/exits] / [number of trains per day], I wonder if one of the quieter Merseyrail stations might actually be it due to the very large number in the denominator, with most stations getting 4tph.

With the ratio the other way round possibly something in Scotland e.g. on the Highland Main Line maybe, or the WHL? Lowish frequency but plenty of passengers, in summer at least?

I had the same suspicion, but both Green Lane and Bank Hall are busier than I thought, at 1273rd and 1428th (Green Lane 7.29 pax/service, Bank Hall 5.07). Locally Hoscar, New Lane and Bescar Lane are all poor performers, but they don't have a particularly frequent service.

NorthOxonian · 25 Feb 2020

S&CLER said:
I had the same suspicion, but both Green Lane and Bank Hall are busier than I thought, at 1273rd and 1428th (Green Lane 7.29 pax/service, Bank Hall 5.07). Locally Hoscar, New Lane and Bescar Lane are all poor performers, but they don't have a particularly frequent service.

Possibly veering slightly off topic, but mentions of Merseyrail inspired me to look at the Tyne and Wear Metro for comparison. Our quietest station is probably Pallion (the data backs that up), which had a figure of about 3.25 pax/service. It gets 5tph for most of the day Mon - Sat, and 4tph in the evenings and on Sundays, but less than 100,000 use it (though as with all of the Sunderland stations, the lack of any local barriers means there could be a significant amount of fare evasion).

RichJF · 25 Feb 2020

It must be something like Etchingham (Sussex). It has a population of 800 & has over 60 trains a day stopping there!

telstarbox · 25 Feb 2020

Some of those will be from Hawkhurst though which is larger.

Halish Railway · 25 Feb 2020

Is Cononley a shout for being over served as it is only a small village (1,200 according to the 2011 census) with 4tph in each direction and the fact that many drive to Steeton & Silsden to take advantage of subsidised WYPTE fares?

PTR 444 · 26 Feb 2020

RichJF said:
It must be something like Etchingham (Sussex). It has a population of 800 & has over 60 trains a day stopping there!

Last time I read Etchingham had 1 train per hour. Don’t know how you can have 60tpd at hourly intervals when there are only 24 hours in a day with approximately 6 of those in the small hours when trains would not normally run.

Stations with most trains for fewest passengers, and vice versa

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