Data reveals most and least used railway stations in East Lancashire
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has released the data which is generated by reviewing passenger numbers in each train station through their entries and exits.
Blackburn[1] was found to be the most used station in the region, with 1,291,704 passengers passing through in 2022/23.
This is an increase of 12.8 percent from the year previous , as more people returned to working in the office post-Covid and record inflation pushed up fuel prices, and ranks Blackburn as the 369th most used station in the UK.
Blackburn was also the only station in the region to have more than one million passengers in the year, with Burnley[2] Manchester Road posting the next highest figure at 507,364, making it the 773rd most used station in the country.
Burnley Central just scraped into the six-digit numbers with 100,182 passengers.
Other larger towns in East Lancashire also saw high passenger numbers, with Accrington recording 459,616, Clitheroe getting 287,170, and Darwen[4] recording 269,146 passengers.
The station with the lowest recorded number of passengers was Pleasington, on the East Lancashire line between Blackburn and Preston.
The station had just 8,064 passengers in 2022/23, a drop of 16.28 per cent from the 9,632 it got in the previous year.
No other stations had a four-digit number of passengers, though Hapton was the second lowest with 12,002, dropping from 14,330 in 2021/22.
Overall, the data shows passenger numbers increased in East Lancashire in the year 2022/23.
Figures went up by 12.24 per cent from 3,176,944 in 2021/22 to 3,566,002 in 2022/23.
Northern, which runs many services throughout East Lancashire, has been approached for comment.