The Elizabeth line keeps shaking up London’s travel, and now it’s dethroned Waterloo station as Great Britain’s busiest railway station.
Elizabeth line corridor at Liverpool Street station (c) ianVisits
London Liverpool Street has seen its passenger numbers more than double to over 80 million, from around 32 million a year ago. On the other side of London, Paddington station also saw its passenger numbers leap from nearly 24 million to nearly 60 million.
To put that into context, Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted Airports collectively carried 131 million passengers in 2022, compared to around 140 million for just Liverpool Street and Paddington stations.
Rail is far busier than planes, and takes up a lot less space.
Fortunately, most of those extra passengers are using the new Elizabeth line tunnel platforms, otherwise the mainline platforms would be overwhelmed. The Elizabeth line effect has also pushed the UK’s traditionally busiest station, Waterloo, down to third place in the rankings.
More of the Lizzie line effect can be seen at Tottenham Court Road, which the rail regulator treats as a mainline rail station served only by the Elizabeth line, and despite not being open for the full year, it was the seventh busiest station in Great Britain with 34.9 million entries and exits.
The figures are for the period between between 1st April 2022 and 31st March 2023 released by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).
Howard Smith, Elizabeth line Director, said: “The Elizabeth line has been a transformational new railway for London, connecting east and west through ten modern stations, with around 4.3 million journeys being made each week and more than 270 million journeys since it opened last year.
“Liverpool Street, Paddington, Farringdon, Tottenham Court Road and Stratford all being in the top ten busiest stations in the UK, and four of the ten most popular journeys being on the Elizabeth line, shows the popularity of the railway and how it has offered new journey options in London and beyond, as well as a new direct route to Heathrow Airport.”
Their figures showed that the top five railway stations in the UK were all in London.
| Rank | Station | Entries and exits | Rank one year ago |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | London Liverpool Street | 80,400,000 | 4 |
| 2 | London Paddington | 59,200,000 | 6 |
| 3 | London Waterloo | 57,800,000 | 1 |
| 4 | London Bridge | 47,700,000 | 3 |
| 5 | London Victoria | 45,600,000 | 2 |
Stratford station, which temporarily jumped to the top of the rankings during the pandemic, doesn’t even appear in the top 5 any more as rail travel recovers from the effects of the pandemic. Clapham Junction retained its title of Britain’s busiest mainline rail station for people swapping between trains, a title it’s held unchallenged since 2004.
Outside London, Birmingham New Street was the busiest station, with 30.7 million entries and exits.
Teesside Airport, which had its service suspended in May 2022, was the least used station with two entries and exits. Of stations that were open for the whole year, Denton in Greater Manchester was the least used with 34 entries and exits.
In previous years, usage at some of the least used stations has greatly increased the following year — because people surge to visit the country’s quietest station, promptly knocking it out of the charts the following year.
Across Great Britain, 1,385 million passenger journeys were made during the latest reporting period, an increase of 40% from the 990 million journeys made in the previous year (April 2021 to March 2022).
Top 10 stations in London (ex Elizabeth line “tube stations”)
| Station | Passenger Numbers |
|---|---|
| London Liverpool Street | 80,448,194 |
| London Paddington | 59,182,926 |
| London Waterloo | 57,789,780 |
| London Bridge | 47,657,264 |
| London Victoria | 45,563,972 |
| Stratford (London) | 44,136,784 |
| London St Pancras International | 33,296,120 |
| Farringdon | 31,459,904 |
| London Euston | 31,318,408 |
| London Kings Cross | 23,287,414 |
Top 10 stations outside London
| Station | Passenger Numbers |
|---|---|
| Birmingham New Street | 30,726,280 |
| Leeds | 23,964,156 |
| Manchester Piccadilly | 23,558,364 |
| Glasgow Central | 20,767,954 |
| Edinburgh | 18,212,628 |
| Gatwick Airport | 16,507,980 |
| Brighton | 14,052,890 |
| Reading | 12,400,988 |
| Glasgow Queen Street | 12,283,736 |
| Liverpool Central | 11,401,980 |
The charts are for Great Britain – which excludes Northern Ireland, not that including it would make a matterial difference to the above numbers.
Interesting, thanks. A question that someone reading this might be able to answer – are these numbers actual increases or is this just a statistical effect reflecting the fact that many people who used to arrive at (say) Liverpool Street on the Underground (not included in these figures, I think?) are now arriving on the Elizabeth line (which IS included). I wonder if there’s a comparison which looks at combined Underground and National Rail figures rather than just a shift in whose infrastucture’s being used.
Of course this doesn’t detract from the overall point of the article, it’s just me being geeky!
That’s a key factor in the jump in figures. Passengers that would’ve previously arrived on London Underground wouldn’t have been captured in these figures. If they now use the Elizabeth Line, they are counted as a National Rail passenger. It’s made more complicated by the fact that the Elizabeth Line station is double-ended.
A footnote on the ORR press release says:
“Many of the journeys made using the new Elizabeth line infrastructure were previously made using other methods of public transport in London, such as the London Underground or Docklands Light Railway. However, a recent TfL board paper (Elizabeth Line Passenger Usage Insight – section 6) suggested that around 30% of the Elizabeth line journeys were ‘new’ demand, i.e. generated trips which would not have been made without the existence of the Elizabeth line, or mode shift from non-public transport.”
Not sure about these figures, Waterloo still feels a lot busier to me. I wonder if it’s just because Liverpool street requires more exit and entry. e.g. crossing between Elizabeth line/underground to overground. Waterloo, you can remain behind the ticket barriers in most cases.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Waterloo was still the busiest once you count all the people using the Underground there too. It’s just that at Liverpool St and Paddington, one of the tube lines now counts as a railway.
You can remain behind the ticket barriers between London Underground and Elizabeth Line at both Paddington and Liverpool Street/Moorgate. It’s hard to see how all these journeys are counted.
(and you can’t travel between Underground and National Rail at Waterloo (or Waterloo East/Southwark) without passing through both sets of barriers, or in the case of the W&C, tapping in/out as appropriate)
“It’s hard to see how all these journeys are counted.” <-- have a look around and you'll often see passenger flow counters mounted into ceilings, and there's also anonomised Wi-Fi tracking which gives a very good picture of passenger flows within stations.
Shows how the planners got it wrong, Farringdon was forecast to be the busiest UK station once Lizzy line opened, huge blunder as Farringdon was build for that prediction, and Liverpool Street not even considered.
Farringdon was always said to be the busiest in terms of trains per hour when you factor in all the different services passing through – I never read anyone saying it would have the most passengers using the station.
Was it? I wouldn’t say Farringdon strikes me as a particularly capacious station and requires a street crossing to interchange with the Underground (well, when following the signs).
Also the only Elizabeth line station to be built with a continuous central tunnel is Liverpool Street.
Liverpool Central ?
Is that Liverpool Lime Street ?
No, it’s a station in the centre of Liverpool which underground is served by Merseyrail services to Southport.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Liverpool+Central
I’m not sure if these numbers reflect the success of the EL or failure to get through running operational! I expect the numbers for Paddington and Liverpool Street may actually drop next year with EL through running. For much of 22/23 it would see people changing eg at Paddington if they were traveling from Heathrow to the core.
Not heard anyone call it ‘The Lizzie Line’.
Seems to be an invention of journalists who haven’t realised that the moniker isn’t in common parlance.
Wow. Imagine how much higher the Paddington numbers could be if the lines west of there were not permanently suffering some issue? Twenty plus years of signalling problems… (plus endless points failures, overhead wires snarled, leaves, trespassers, broken rails…)
At the moment, services to Bedwyn remain curtailed due to a lack of trains. The new trains were supposed to speed things up and allow greater capacity on the lines, but they proved defective and often there are many unavailable. The old Turbo trains (which were at least reliable) were “too slow” to meet this fantastical new schedule, so were retired. Ironically, the schedule is almost never realised due to the litany of faults on the lines
And a particular bugbear of mine, the old Turbo trains were bike-friendly (any vestibule) but the new trains require prebooking – even when they offer no specific bike space (technically – I’ve not had the enforced yet – not even the drivers seem to know where a bike is supposed to go on some). This is progress?