New Street Station named busiest rail hub outside London

BIRMINGHAM’S New Street Station has been named as the busiest rail hub in the country outside of London.

New data from the Office of Road and Rail shows the station as the seventh busiest in the country – an increase on its position last year.

The total number of entries and exits recorded at the station between April 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016 was 39,077,018.

The figures suggest the massive redevelopment of the station and the improvement to its concourse have benefitted passenger numbers.

Also, the figures reflect the transition of the station as the station as the new concourse was not officially opened until September 2015 – half way through the latest figures.

The next batch of data will make for better comparisons as the new-look station – with its new Midland Metro connection – will have been operational for 12 months.

Elsewhere in the West Midlands, Coventry (6,921,432) was the next busiest station, followed by Birmingham Moor Street (6,874,222), Birmingham International (5,772,848) and Wolverhampton (4,746,338).

Waterloo continues to top the list of Britain’s busiest stations with almost 100 million journeys in 2015/16.

Of the top 10 busiest stations, nine are in the capital with only New Street preventing the clean sweep.

Overall, it was estimated that there were more than 2.9bn entries and exits at all rail stations in Great Britain in 2015-16, an increase of 5% compared to the previous year. There were also 222m connections made.