The Office for Road and Rail has announced that London Liverpool Street was officially the busiest railway station in the UK in 2024.  

This is based on their main metric of total entries and exits of a station annually.  

The Office of Rail and Road’s entries and exits metric measures how many passengers enter and leave a railway station annually, based on ticket sales and travel data, to assess station usage and demand.  

London Liverpool Street saw 94.5 million entries and exits across the period of April 2023 – March 2024. 

There was no change from the year prior, where London Liverpool Street was also the busiest station.  

Director for the Office of Rail and Road, Feras Alshaker said: “Our official statistics released today show how the full opening of the Elizabeth line has changed the way people travel into and across the capital. Waterloo had been the busiest station in Britain for all but one of the previous 18 years.” 

“These statistics provide crucial insights for passengers, the rail industry, and its stakeholders and demonstrate clearly how travel patterns are changing across the country.” 

Director of the Elizabeth Line, Howard Smith said: “The Elizabeth line has been a transformational new railway for London.”  

The least used station in the UK was Denton, Greater Manchester, which saw only 54 entries and exits. 

Other quiet stations included: Shippea Hill, Cambridgeshire, Ince and Elton, Cheshire and Reddish South, Greater Manchester. 

These stations are some of the quietest in the UK due to their rural locations and the infrequency of train services through these stations.  

The top ten busiest railway stations in the UK are all based in London, with the next busiest non-London station being Birmingham New Street.  

The other most used stations outside of the capital are Manchester Piccadilly, Glasgow Central and Leeds.  

Despite this, rail travel is yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.  

In 2020-2021, journeys on trains plummeted to 388 million, 78 per cent less than the year previous.  

Speaking with Frank, a gatesman at London Waterloo station, he said: “I’ve definitely noticed the change. It’s busier now than during the pandemic, of course, but it’s still not quite like the old days. There’s a steady flow during rush hours, and weekends seem livelier than before.” 

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, UK rail travel had been consistently rising since the previous low of 760 million passenger journeys in 1980.  

Obviously, the data cannot account for all journeys, particularly those who commit fare evasion.  

The Rail Delivery Group estimates that £240 million is lost through fare evasion annually. 

Northern Trains and Great Anglia recently came under fire for unlawfully prosecuting 74,000 passengers accused of fare evasion.  

In August 2024, a judge ruled that the pending cases were to be ruled void, because of the discrepancies by the train companies.  

Greater Anglia acknowledged that there were “a series of significant errors” and that they wanted to “apologise unreservedly.”