Leeds rail station enters top 10 of Britain’s busiest

LEEDS City station has moved into the top 10 of the busiest rail stations in Great Britain.

27.7m passengers used the station in the year to March, an increase of 5.8%, making it the tenth-busiest station and the second-busiest outside London.

The country’s busiest, London Waterloo, had 98.4m entries and exits while Birmingham New Street was the most-used station outside of the capital with 34.7m passengers.

The figures from the Office of Rail Regulation show Leeds saw an additional 1.5m passengers compared with a year earlier and its daily average is now at 76,000.

On the last Saturday before Christmas Leeds station typically handles about 175,000 people, while next year’s passenger figures will have a boost from the Tour de France as nearly a quarter-of-a-million people used the station on Grand Depart Saturday last July.

The top five busiest stations in Yorkshire and the Humber were:

Leeds 27,729,453

Sheffield 8,618,394

York 8,223,421

Huddersfield 4,816,107

Doncaster 3,409,789