Newport Railway Station is second busiest in Wales
Office for Rail and Road data looks at the number of people entering and exiting every train station across Great Britain.
Unsurprisingly given its position on the main London to Swansea line, Newport was by far the busiest station in Gwent, with 2.3 million entries and exits in the year to March.
It is also the second-busiest station in Wales, behind Cardiff Central.
Second most busy in Gwent was Caerphilly, with 525,000, followed by Abergavenny, with 360,000; Cwmbran, with 353,000; and Ystrad Mynach, with 199,000.
The least-used station in Gwent was Caldicot, with 65,912 entries and exists; along with Rogerstone, with 70,426; and Pye Corner, with 100,000. At both Newbridge and Pontypool and New Inn stations 109,000 visits were recorded.
Liverpool Street in London overtook Waterloo as the most-used station in Great Britain, which the ORR attributed to the opening of London’s latest train service, the Elizabeth Line.
Waterloo had been the busiest station in the country in all but one of the previous 18 years, but it even dropped to third in the year to March behind Paddington, also on the Elizabeth Line.
The busiest stations outside London were Birmingham New Street, Leeds and Manchester Piccadilly.
Cardiff Central topped the list in Wales, while Glasgow Central was the most used station in Scotland.
The least used station that was open throughout the whole year was Denton in Greater Manchester, with 34 entries and exits.
Teesside Airport station in Darlington recorded two entries and exits, but its once-a-week Sunday service was suspended in May 2022 after the platform was judged to be unsafe.
In total, there were 2.5 billion entries and exits across Great Britain in 2022-23, a significant increase from 1.8 billion the year before, but still below the three billion entries and exits in 2019-20, before the coronavirus[1] pandemic.
Michael Solomon Wiliams, campaigns manager of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: “It’s encouraging to see that station usage is on the rise, but to continue this upward trend and surpass pre-pandemic numbers, rail needs to be better value and more reliable.
“Instead of implementing another record-high increase, the Government should freeze rail fares as it has fuel duty and make green public transport cheaper”.
References
- ^ coronavirus (www.southwalesargus.co.uk)