Manchester rail passenger traffic soars, while Liverpool recedes
Manchester’s Piccadilly station is the busiest rail hub in the North West, and the 14th busiest across the UK.
New figures detailing passenger movements across the UK rail network showed that Piccadilly moved up two places in the national league, handling 30,251,948 passenger entries and exits during the 2018/19 financial year, compared with the previous annual period.
London’s Waterloo station retained top spot, handling 94,192,690 passenger movements.
In the North West, the second busiest station throughout the region was Liverpool Central (14,605,748) making it the 30th busiest station in the UK, dropping two places from the previous year.
Liverpool Lime Street was the third busiest in the North West (14,221,388) at 33rd place, a drop of three slots on a year ago.
Manchester Oxford Road (9,338,352) and Manchester Victoria (8,949,698) were the fourth and fifth busiest stations across the North West, respectively.
Nationally, they were 47th and 50th busiest stations, respectively, compared with 52nd and 56th slots a year ago.
The next five busiest stations in the North West were: Moorfields in Liverpool city centre (6,534,152); Manchester Airport (5,707,542); Chester (5,061,662); Preston (4,646,028); and Stockport (4,439,842).
Liverpool, as a local authority area, saw a fall of four million passenger entries and exits against the previous year, registering a total of 53.3m movements, down from 57.3m.
In contrast, the Manchester region saw a 5.1m increase in passenger movements, from 51.3m in 2017/18, to 56.4m during 2018/19.
The least used stations throughout the UK were Stanlow and Thornton, in Cheshire, and Denton, in Tameside, which both registered just 46 passenger entries and exits.
