Britain’s Busiest Railway Stations No 1

Saturday 16th November 2024

As the Office of Rail & Road is soon to announce updated numbers of passengers using every railway station in Britain for the year ended March 2024, this monthly blog series counting down the previous year’s top ten busiest stations finally reaches number 1 – which, for the first time, is London Liverpool Street with 80,448,194 entries and exits recorded in the year to March 2023. That number was 15.8% higher than the pre-Covid 69,482,532 passengers recorded to March 2019 demonstrating, once again, the very significant impact of the Elizabeth line on travel patterns within central London.

Having visited and mooched around the top ten stations this year it doesn’t come across to me that Liverpool Street is the busiest, nor Paddington the second busiest. Waterloo, Victoria and London Bridge seem much busier. But that’s because wandering around the concourse you don’t get to see the huge numbers arriving and departing deep under ground on the purple trains.

As some have observed in the comments during this series, it does seem somewhat opaque how numbers of passengers using the Elizabeth line are calculated especially when the gate line is the same as the Underground, as it is at Liverpool Street (and as previously noted is the case at Tottenham Court Road – Busiest Station No 7).

There’s no doubt Liverpool Street is busy. Stansted Express trains, with their airport passengers, along with London Overground’s commuters and passengers from the north east Home Counties, Essex and East Anglia see to that.

Today’s station layout follows extensive rebuilding between 1985 and 1991. This brought an eight platform eastern extension, added in 1894 to the original ten platforms that had fully opened in 1875 to become one station, rather than the pre-1985 split where the two halves were connected by a footbridge.

You can still see the join where the ticket office is now located…

… in the large space between platforms 10 and 11 together with a Customer Lounge hidden away….

… (albeit the seats aren’t what you might have in your “lounge” at home)…

,,, as well as road access for deliveries.

Here’s a photograph showing the 1894 eastern extension, now firmly part of the merged concourse, together with the first floor balcony retail area that overlooks the concourse.

Network Rail’s map of the station layout shows the two original parts and that platform 18 on the extreme eastern side is no longer in use.

The entrance on the east side of the station from Bishopsgate is also at an upper level…

… as is the main entrance from Old Broad Street where you can see the site of the former Broad Street station demolished in 1986 to make way for the Broadgate development (see below). The original entrance to Liverpool Street at this point, together with the taxi ramp, was at the lower level.

Now there’s a pedestrian ramp from the north west corner of the station concourse by platform 1 which provides a link to Sun Street…

… which is on the north side of Broadgate and as you can see in the above photo passengers can either take the footpath ramp down to that exit/entrance at the lower level (right) or to the upper balcony level (left) which brings you to the bus station.

With its passageway to three bus stops…

… used by route 153, 344 and N133 with rather rudimentary facilities…

… and, this being TfL, out of date misleading departure information – route 133 ceased using this terminus and was diverted to Holborn in April 2023, but hey, let’s leave the old information up for more than eighteen months (and still counting)…

… but while waiting for a non existent bus route, you do get fine views across platforms 1 to 10 in the original part of the station …

… as well as towards the gateline…

… and across to where platforms 11 to 17 are located the other side of the wall in the distance.

There’s also a subway style entrance/exit to the western side of Broadgate where there’s another entrance to the Elizabeth gateline…

… which can also be used to access the Underground lines serving the station (Central, Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith & City).

There’s another entrance/exit to the Central line platforms from the north side of the concourse at either end of platforms 1 to 10…

… which has slightly more restricted opening hours.

The one thing Liverpool Street has in abundance is ticket machines. Compared to Paddington, LST is TVM Heaven. There’s a long bank of ten across the main concourse…

…. with two more next to them…

…. and another five by the ticket office.

Then there’s a bank of 11 TfL machines by the gateline to the Elizabeth and Underground lines which sell the full range of National Rail tickets, although I doubt many passengers know that.

As well as the Greater Anglia ticket office there’s an information point…

… and a desk for mobility assistance…

… and there’s a Visitor Centre.

Another plus point for Britain’s busiest station is the toilets, which are down at basement level but have been refurbished…

… and are kept in good condition including the noise of a bird of prey (certainly in the gents) to keep pigeons away (I assume).

As you can see, the escalator was out of action on the day I visited.

Obviously the Elizabeth line sees the most frequent service with 32 trains an off-peak hour made up of 16 eastbound alternating with eight to Abbey Wood, and eight to Shenfield and western destinations being Paddington (six an hour), Heathrow Airport T4 (four an hour), Heathrow Airport T5 (two an hour), Maidenhead (two an hour) and Reading (two an hour). The ground level station also sees four peak hour Elizabeth line trains driving/departing from/to Shenfield.

There’s the novelty of one of the Elizabeth line’s incline lifts for those with luggage and accessibility needs.

Above ground, London Overground sees eight trains an hour with four going to Chingford, two to Enfield Town and two to Cheshunt combining to provide four an hour as far as Edmonton Green.

Greater Anglia has the biggest presence on the ground floor with 17 trains an off-peak hour to Stansted Airport (four an hour); Cambridge North (two an hour); Southend Victoria (three an hour); Hertford East (two an hour), Norwich (two an hour) and hourly trains to Ipswich (stopping), Braintree, Colchester Town and Clacton-on-sea which combine to provide five an hour to both Chelmsford and Colchester but with varying stopping patterns.

At weekends c2c trains to and from Southend and Shoeburyness (two an hour) also use Liverpool Street.

London Overground and Greater Anglia trains to Stansted, Hertford and Cambridge generally use the lower numbered platforms with trains to Norwich and Southend on the higher number platforms but there’s no real pattern on a typical day.

A large back-to-back departure sign is easily seen from the concourse and the balcony level and despite being much busier than Euston, is a more pleasant place to wait and catch a train.

The large memorial to those railway workers who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the First World War was moved in the 1980s rebuild and now adorns a respectful corner on the balcany level by the Old Broad Street entrance. It’s the biggest memorial I’ve seen on the railway.

Another nice touch is the Meeting Point on the concourse with its attractive foliage.

The usual retail outlets can be found on both lower concourse and balcony levels and personally, I always find a visit to Liverpool Street stress free and enjoyable, but I’m lucky in that I very rarely visit during peak commuter times and I’m aware Network Rail have plans to develop the station to avoid over-crowding.

But controversial development plans for the station’s future made public two years ago included partially demolishing the Victorian station and adding a 21 storey office block above with a new two-level concourse. Unsurprisingly, there was a public outcry with over 2,000 objections and a celebrity (Griff Rhys Jones) led campaign against the development. Network Rail officially dropped the scheme earlier this month only to announce a new down-sized proposal and more sympathetic design from a different architect

New images released by Network Rail show a glass office building wrapped around the station building and hotel rather than plonked on top as before. The height is now 97 metres compared to the previous 108 metre design, so not particularly down-sized. The new architect, ACME, is reassuringly quoted “we will retain the sense of a tall and airy concourse, with a flexible workspace building above to fund the development of the station at street level”.

In the more immediate future it’s just been announced £22 million will be spent on cleaning and repairing the roof above platforms 1 to 10 with preparatory work starting during a week long closure between Christmas and New Year. The work is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.

It looks like Liverpool Street will retain the crown of being Britain’s Busiest Railway Station for many years to come with Network Rail justifying these latest plans with the prediction that by 2050 passenger numbers will hit 140 million a year – a 75% increase on last year’s 80 million.

In the meantime, it’s below ground where the growth has happened.

And finally, perhaps Liverpool Street’s greatest claim to fame is not just being Britain’s Busiest Railway Station but also the only station in the top ten busiest stations covered in this series to feature on the Monopoly board.

Roger French

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