Usage of town’s railway stations soars by 245 per cent | Chester and …

Office for Rail and Road data looks at the number of people entering and exiting every train station in the country, including the seven stations for which data was collected in Warrington.

This, compared with figures from the previous year, shows more people were choosing to travel by train than a year before.

Warrington Bank Quay was the town’s busiest train station, with more than 1.12million people entering and exiting the station between April 2022 and May this year.

According to data, this was a 261 per cent increase from the same period between 2021 and 2022, during which time the figure was 311,724.

Closely behind was Warrington Central, with just over 1.1million passengers in 2022-23 – also up 261 per cent from 305,384 in the previous year.

Birchwood was the town’s third busiest station, recording 358,756 passengers this past year, which was a 199 per cent rise from 120,136 in the prior 12 months.

Warrington West was next with a 307 per cent increase from 68,936 to 280,330, followed by Padgate – up 192 per cent from 35,552 to 104,464.

Passengers at Glazebrook railway station were only up three per cent from 23,552 to 24,296.

Warrington’s least used station, unsurprisingly was Sankey for Penketh – despite being up 124 per cent from 1,498 to 3,358.

Michael Solomon Wiliams, campaigns manager of the Campaign for Better Transport, commented on the statistics.

He said: “It is 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.”

He also called for a simplification of the national ticketing system, adding: “The rail fares system is riddled with absurd inconsistencies.

“This makes buying a train ticket time-consuming and complicated, creating a real barrier to train travel.

“The Government has talked about reforming fares for years, but aside from a little tinkering around the edges we have seen nothing like the root-and-branch reform promised.

“A simpler, fairer, easier and better-value fares system is now long overdue.”