Railway station usage

Somerset has ten railway stations on the national rail network.

Seven are owned by First Great Western and three by South West Trains.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) publishes annual estimates of usage at all stations in the UK. The data are compiled for the ORR by Steer Davies Gleave.

Key issues

• The estimated combined total of entrances and exits for all ten stations in 2015-16 was 2,957,850.
• Estimated rail station usage in Somerset in the past five years has risen by 12%, and by 50% in the past ten years. Nationally, the increases have been 31% and 78%, respectively.
• Taunton is the busiest station in Somerset, with 1,375,546 entries and exits, 
• Bruton has the smallest throughput of users, with 36,950, double the figure of ten years ago.
• Eight of the ten stations experienced record high numbers of users in 2015/16 (since data started in 1997/98).

Latest Railway station usage in Somerset

Estimated usage of Somerset's railway stations in 2015/16 are shown below, alongside the % changes in the past five and ten years.

Source: Office of Road and Rail          * Entries and Exits only

The chart below shows the trends for the six busiest stations in Somerset.

Source: Office of Road and Rail

For comparison, the busiest station in the South West is Bristol Temple Meads with 10.7 million in 2015/16. London Waterloo has the highest number of entries and exits of any station in the UK, with 99.1 million.

 Further information:

• Station usage figures are derived from ticket sales data recorded in rail industry systems. "Rover" type tickets have no defined origin or destination, and are excluded from these calculations..
• Data for all stations on the network are available on the ORR website.
• 2016/17 data will be published in December 2017.