Its official – Palmers Green is one of the busiest stations on First Capital Connect’s great Northern Route.
Data published by the Guardian this week revealed that more people got on or off a train at Palmers Green than almost any other station on the route, with the exception of Moorgate and Kings Cross (as these are exit points for other lines, the numbers arriving or joining FCC have not been separately measured).
Palmers Green had 1,662,004 entries or exits in 2011/12, and if you had a suspicion that the station is getting busier, you would be right. Its a 2% increase on 2010/11.
The figures for the route, in descending order, are
- Palmers Green 1,662,004
- Letchworth 1,523,282
- Winchmore Hill 1,423,616
- Old Street 1,336,722
- Hertford North 1,290,728
- Enfield Chase 1,248,758
- Alexandra Palace 1,157,282
- Hornsey 1,129,648
- Gordon Hill 1,088,830
- Haringey 1,062,026
- Bowes Park 814,562
- Cuffley 658,354
- Drayton Park 505,230
- Essex Road 482,764
Completists will be disappointed to see that Crews Hill and Bayford arent listed.
There are hours of fun to be had on the Guardian’s website, where you can search the data using the interactive table http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/may/19/train-stations-listed-rail#data
3 replies on “Palmers Green is really really busy”
I have a new job in Hertford, which means travelling against the traffic 2-3 days per week. Most mornings the 8.25am fast train from PG has about 20 people on board. It rattles past some very empty looking stations – Crews Hill, Grange Park and most of all Bayford. The latter is barely a village when you drive through it, but pleasant and rural all the same. Worth a trip for a country walk on a weekend, as is Hertford (surprisingly lively at night). Oh, and coming home, Hertford North to PG @ 19 minutes is pretty fast.
As the Guarian site says, this is data collected by the Office of Rail Regulation and then republished. You can see the original here: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1529. While it is true that Palmers Green is busy, it is not the busiest on the Great Northern route as stated in the story above. If you look at the specific service pattern that includes Plamers Green then PG is indeed almost the busiest – but Finsbury Park has over 6.4 million a year and Stevenage over 4 million. Looking at the Great Northern route as a whole then we have Hitchin (2.6 million), Potters Bar (1.6 million) and Welwyn GC (2.5 million). I haven’t included Peterborough, Cambridge or King’s Lynn, all of which are on the Great Northern route. You mentioned Crews Hill and Bayford. They are 199,664 and 36,304 respectively. Kind regards, First Capital Connect
Wow, this is amazing. We asked First Capital Connect for their own “footfall” data not knowing about the Guardian data.