Over 62% of the station’s services were cancelled last year.
While us Mancunians might like to think our city is among the elite in the UK (and it definitely is), it turns out, our train stations – not so much.
Revealed with data obtained by Network Rail via the Freedom of Information Act, from software company RotaCloud, the figures show just how many affected services 2,566 train stations in the UK had last year – with some stations facing delays or cancellations of over two-thirds of their services. Wowza.
Topping the list was Lancaster, with an average of 63.5% of their journeys affected in the past year. The station isn’t a quiet one either, with around 2.1 million people using it. Manchester Oxford Road was labelled the fourth worst in the UK, with 62.8% of services affected. This will come as no surprise to those who use the station frequently, with the government recently revealing that only 56% of Northern Rail’s trains arrived on time in the last quarter.
Check out the top 20 list of stations with the most delayed trains below:
- Lancaster (63.5%)
- Wakefield Westgate (63%)
- Durham (62.8%)
- Manchester Oxford Road (62.8%)
- Meadowhall, Sheffield (62.5%)
- Smethwick Galton Bridge, Birmingham (60.7%)
- Inverkeithing, Fife (60.3%)
- Stalybridge (60.3%)
- Huddersfield (59.7%)
- Birmingham New Street (58.7%)
- Darlington (58.1%)
- Sheffield (57.3%)
- Wakefield Kirkgate (57.1%)
- Wolverhampton (57.1%)
- York (57%)
- Manchester Deansgate (57%)
- Birmingham International (56.9%)
- Warrington Bank Quay (56.8%)
- Coventry (56.7%)
- Stockport (56.2%)
Unsurprisingly, the majority of the list is in the North, with Stalybridge, Deansgate and Stockport also ranking in the top 20 worst stations. A spokesperson for the Rail Delivery Group has spoke of the large level of delays, saying “We know how frustrating delays can be. We’re doing more to tackle them, spending billions on major upgrades to ease congestion.”.
Speaking of the figures, James Lintern, co-found of RotaCloud has said:
“We wanted to take a deeper look into the reliability of the country’s trains, and we built our ‘punctuality tool’ to highlight the sheer volume of delays, cancellations and general lateness in the rail network.
“The country’s hardworking railway staff are spread paper-thin, and we didn’t build this tool to give them more of a bashing than they’re already getting. But if it can help illustrate the scope of this problem in a more relatable way, especially to other employers in some of the worst affected areas, it might encourage more businesses to adopt things like flexible working, where possible — something that can only help ease the strain on our overburdened trains and stations.”