Britain’s stations since the pandemic

The question

Rail travel collapsed in 2020. How much of it has come back, and where? And how much did the Elizabeth line, which opened through central London in May 2022, change the city’s stations?

What I did

• Built a pipeline in DuckDB, written mostly in SQL, that turns the Office of Rail and Road’s estimates for every station in Great Britain, from April 1997 to March 2025, into one row per station and year, alongside TfL’s own counts for the Underground.
• Wrote 9 tests in SQL that must pass before anything here is published, including checks that the time series matches ORR’s separate table for 2024-25 station by station and reproduces ORR’s ranking of the busiest stations.
• Compared each station’s latest year with 2019-20, the last full year before the pandemic, counting only stations open in both years.

Travel is above its pre-pandemic level, but only because of new stations. Great Britain’s stations saw 3.06 billion entries and exits in 2024-25, against 3.01 billion in 2019-20. The 2,561 stations open in both years were at 96.7% of their 2019-20 level. The 25 stations with no figure for 2019-20 added 155.2 million, and 5 of them, on the Elizabeth line, account for 150.4 million of that.

1. North East53 stations 119.2%
2. South West167 stations 105.9%
3. East Midlands108 stations 101.4%
4. London333 stations 101.3%
5. Wales222 stations 98.0%
6. Great Britain2,561 stations 96.7%
7. Yorkshire and The Humber187 stations 95.4%
8. East of England214 stations 94.5%
9. South East430 stations 92.3%
10. North West335 stations 88.5%
11. Scotland356 stations 88.2%
12. West Midlands156 stations 83.8%

Back to the 2019-20 level

Recovery is uneven. Station by station, the North East is at 119.2% of its 2019-20 level and the West Midlands at 83.8%. London is at 101.3%, its Elizabeth line stations included.

The Elizabeth line’s stations now see 2.1 times their 2019-20 use. With 2019-20 as 100, the line’s 41 stations stood at 212.9 in 2024-25, and London’s other stations at 87.0. Among stations with at least a million entries and exits in 2019-20, all 10 of the fastest-growing are on the Elizabeth line, led by Heathrow Terminal 5 (+221.9%).

Station	Region	Entries and exits, 2024-25	Change since 2019-20
1. London Liverpool Street (Elizabeth line)	London	98.0 million	+48.5%
2. London Waterloo	London	70.4 million	−19.0%
3. London Paddington (Elizabeth line)	London	69.9 million	+55.8%
4. Tottenham Court Road (Elizabeth line)	London	68.1 million	new
5. London Bridge	London	54.7 million	−13.3%
6. London Victoria	London	53.8 million	−26.9%
7. Stratford (Elizabeth line)	London	51.5 million	+22.8%
8. Farringdon (Elizabeth line)	London	50.2 million	+204.1%
9. Bond Street (Elizabeth line)	London	42.8 million	new
10. London Euston	London	40.2 million	−10.1%
11. London St Pancras International	London	38.8 million	+7.8%
12. Whitechapel (Elizabeth line)	London	37.1 million	+179.0%
13. Birmingham New Street	West Midlands	36.6 million	−21.3%
14. London Kings Cross	London	27.7 million	−14.8%
15. Manchester Piccadilly	North West	27.4 million	−14.9%

London Liverpool Street is Britain’s busiest station, with 98.0 million entries and exits in 2024-25, +48.5% on 2019-20. London Waterloo, the busiest of these in 2019-20, is down 19.0%. The biggest falls among large stations are at London Cannon Street (−59.4%), Erdington (−53.2%) and Woolwich Arsenal (−48.3%).

Station	Region	2019-20	2024-25	Change
Heathrow Terminal 5 (Elizabeth line)	London	1.5 million	4.7 million	+221.9%
Abbey Wood (Elizabeth line)	London	3.8 million	11.9 million	+210.4%
Maryland (Elizabeth line)	London	1.3 million	4.1 million	+204.7%
Farringdon (Elizabeth line)	London	16.5 million	50.2 million	+204.1%
Whitechapel (Elizabeth line)	London	13.3 million	37.1 million	+179.0%
Ealing Broadway (Elizabeth line)	London	6.9 million	15.5 million	+123.7%
Southall (Elizabeth line)	London	3.5 million	7.7 million	+120.7%
West Ealing (Elizabeth line)	London	1.2 million	2.5 million	+115.6%
Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3 (Elizabeth line)	London	4.0 million	7.9 million	+99.0%
Hayes and Harlington (Elizabeth line)	London	4.4 million	8.5 million	+91.8%
London Cannon Street	London	18.5 million	7.5 million	−59.4%
Erdington	West Midlands	1.0 million	0.5 million	−53.2%
Woolwich Arsenal	London	4.4 million	2.3 million	−48.3%
Cardiff Bay	Wales	1.5 million	0.8 million	−48.3%
Five Ways	West Midlands	2.5 million	1.3 million	−47.8%
Plumstead	London	1.8 million	0.9 million	−47.6%
Queenstown Road (Battersea)	London	1.5 million	0.8 million	−46.3%
Conway Park	North West	1.1 million	0.6 million	−45.0%
Kirkby (Merseyside)	North West	2.9 million	1.6 million	−44.8%
Bexleyheath	London	2.7 million	1.5 million	−44.7%

The Underground is still 19% below 2019. TfL’s counts put its 269 stations at 80.7% of their 2019 level in 2025. Waterloo LU was its busiest station, with 74.5 million entries and exits.

Station	2025	2019	Change
1. Waterloo LU	74.5 million	82.9 million	−10.2%
2. King's Cross St. Pancras	73.6 million	88.3 million	−16.7%
3. Tottenham Court Road	60.8 million	42.0 million	+44.8%
4. Victoria LU	60.2 million	85.5 million	−29.6%
5. Liverpool Street LU	60.1 million	67.2 million	−10.6%
6. Paddington TfL	58.0 million	48.6 million	+19.2%
7. London Bridge LU	56.2 million	74.3 million	−24.4%
8. Stratford	53.2 million	64.9 million	−18.0%
9. Oxford Circus	52.3 million	78.1 million	−33.0%
10. Bond Street	42.3 million	37.5 million	+12.8%

Caveats

• ORR’s figures are estimates based mainly on ticket sales, so they undercount some stations, and its methods change from time to time: it marks a break in the series in 2022-23. It has no figures for 2003-04.
• ORR’s years run from April to March; TfL’s counts are calendar years.
• An entry and an exit are counted separately, so a single journey adds one to each end’s station. Interchanges aren’t included.
• The Elizabeth line’s group includes its stations outside London and its new central stations once they opened, so part of its rise is new stations rather than more people at the same ones.

Data: Office of Rail and Road, Estimates of station usage (Table 1415), accredited official statistics; contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. TfL annual station counts: Powered by TfL Open Data.