Media centre

Wednesday 15 Jan 2020

Improvements at some of London’s busiest stations

Region & Route:

Southern: Wessex

The latest figures released by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) reveal that London Waterloo remains Britain’s busiest station.

Between Sunday 1 April 2018 and Sunday 31 March 2019, 94.2m passengers used the station – an estimate calculated largely on ticket sales.

Other stations in the Top 10 managed by Network Rail Southern region include London Victoria, ranked number 2, with 74.7 million passengers and London Bridge with 61.3 million, in fourth place.

This follows the reopening of the former Eurostar terminal at Waterloo in December 2018 to provide more concourse waiting space, additional ticket barriers and improved access to London Underground. The station also introduced mobile information desks so that passengers can quickly get travel advice and staff have access to real-time information to better assist passengers during disruption.

At London Victoria, the toilets have been refurbished, including a gender neutral facility. Both London Bridge and London Victoria have doubled their seating capacity with new wooden seats with built-in mobile phone chargers and have introduced water fountains to reduce plastic.

The toilets at all the stations are also free to use.

John Halsall, Managing Director for Network Rail Southern Region, said: "We have a programme to transform our stations for the millions of passengers and station users. It is down to the hard working and dedicated teams that we’re able to help so many people.

“We will continue to invest in our stations as it is important to treat passengers as they wish to be treated and by working with our train operator partners, we can make a real difference." 

London Bridge has recently rolled out the “one team” concept, following the success at Victoria in what was a first for Britain’s rail industry. Network Rail staff and employees at train operators Southeastern, Southern and Gatwick Express, ditched their individual company uniforms in favour of a new Team Victoria outfit.

It wasn’t just a cosmetic change – staff are now trained to assist every passenger regardless of the service they’re using. This means passengers no longer need to seek out specific staff for help, improving customer service.

London Bridge has also installed Tap London machines, so that passengers can support homeless charities and have variety of “surprise and delight” events for passengers that have included a spitfire plane, life drawing classes and an exhibition about cats.