The Lizzie line effect – Liverpool Street overtakes Waterloo as …
The Elizabeth line[1] 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[2] 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[3] by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).
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.