Birmingham New Street climbs busiest station national rankings to fifth place

Tuesday 14 Jan 2020

Birmingham New Street climbs busiest station national rankings to fifth place

Region & Route:: North West & Central

Birmingham New Street station is now the fifth busiest in the country, according to latest figures.

Between 2018/19 the station handled 47.9 million passenger entries and exits – 3.5 million more than the previous year and a rise of 8%.

Birmingham New Street is once again the only station outside of London to feature in this year’s top 10 busiest stations in the annual figures published today (Tuesday 14 January) by the Office of Rail and Road.

It also leapfrogs London Euston to take fifth place in the rankings. London Waterloo remains the busiest station in the country.

Dave Penney, managing director for Network Rail’s Central route, said: “More and more people choosing to travel by train in the West Midlands is great for the region and environment. It also reflects the changing face of Birmingham city centre, with new buildings and offices creating more jobs, boosting the regional economy.

“Recent performance levels have not been what passengers and we expect and we are committed to working with our industry partners to improve this. Our Putting Passengers First commitment means we will be focusing on New Street station to develop it for the needs and demands of the passengers who use it every day.”

A number of improvements have been made to Birmingham New Street station in recent years, including:

A new dedicated Passenger Assistance lounge for customers who need additional help making their journeys
A refurbished station reception with passenger seating
Toilets being fully refurbished
Additional seating on the concourse with USB charging ports
Three water refill points in each waiting lounge in the station
The introduction of sunflower lanyards for passengers with hidden disabilities

Notes to Editors

The ORR figures cover the period between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019
The statistics together with an interactive dashboard and animated charts are available at: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/station-usage
As Britain does not have a fully gated rail network, it is not possible to accurately record passengers joining or leaving the network. Therefore, these estimates of station usage are largely based on ticket sales. This places a number of limitations on the data, which users should be aware of. Further information can be found on the website.

Birmingham New Street information

Between 2010 and 2015 Birmingham New Street station underwent a £750m transformation.

A new atrium was built over a huge passenger concourse - five times the size of London Euston’s and equivalent to a football pitch.

On an average weekday 170,000 passengers use the station.

The concourse is designed to handle up to 300,000 passengers per day.

New Street is the busiest station outside London, and the busiest interchange station in Britain.

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

Latest travel advice
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Journalists
Network Rail press office - North West & Central Region
07740 782954
NWCmediarelations@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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