please empty your brain below

...and thanks to Bruce for spotting that TfL had finally snuck out this year's data.
It seems incredible that 'they' are prepared to keep open a station serving no more then one customer a week. There must be something wrong with the stats!
I've just combined the annual LU data from 2007 to 2013 in one sheet. Nearly drove me mad given they keep sorting the 3 Heathrow stations in a different order between sheets! Post 2007 several stations vanish because of the transfer to London Overground / East London Line upgrade.

Should be fun to see how Crossrail's data is presented post 2018 and whose data set it will appear in given LU will run the Central area stops but the entire line will be a National Rail service.
Since so many people change trains at Clapham Junction (rather than entry/exit), the true figure of usage must be much higher.
I don't think the Heathrow T5 & T4 stations recorded anything like the growth that you specify dg. Perhaps I'm somehow not looking at it right, but I see 4.05m in 2013 vs 3.64m in 2012 for T5 and 2.43m vs 2.44m for T4 (a loss in fact).
I suspect the little-used stations each have some special reason for being kept open. Like avoiding politician's blushes. Or serving, with a request stop, some very remote area.
Ah, sorry, the pecuiliar airport statistics are related to PC's comment that the Heathrow stations sometimes appear in different orders in the spreadsheet. So forget those two, pretend the list starts at number three, and I'll add the real nine and ten later.
O for a life of sensations rather than of transport statistics John Keats
When looking at the Waterloo rail figures, I notice that Waterloo East is listed separately and had 6,793,930 as its total. Given that many of those passengers will have entered from the concourse on the main Waterloo station this would make the figures for people using the main Waterloo concourse higher, possibly putting the station at about 98m. I have always wondered why Waterloo is split into two stations and not regarded as one, as the interchange between Waterloo East and Waterloo is probably less of a walk than from platform 19 to 1 on the main station.
Apart from being very politically unacceptable nowadays, the legal procedure involved in closing a station is very expensive. So, unless there was a genuine large cost saving or other very good reason to do it, it is much easier and cheaper to run a minimal service (maybe just one train a week) rather than close it.

One of the, arguably better, consequences of rail franchising is that a Train Operating Company has absolutely no incentive to close stations. It would get all the grief and it successor get the benefits. In any case the competitive nature of tendering would force the next bidders to take the closure into account when bidding so any savings made wouldn't actually benefit them.
Comparing with your 2010 figures Romford has dropped from the ten busiest National Rail stations that aren't central London termini, and Highbury and Islington moved in.
@RayL - the ORR source data also shows (an estimate of) interchanges. For Clapham Jct it's 23.3 million, so almost as much as the entry/exit total.
Percentage increase Top Ten updated... Heathrows 4 & 5 removed,
Latimer Road and Queensbury added.

Does anyone know where the stats for the rail stations at Heathrow can be found, rather than the tube stations? For some reason they don't appear in the GB station usage file.
RayL, the same is true of many interchange stations, as I imagine this data is collected from the numbers of tickets sold and from ticket gate entries/exits. I also imagine the statisticians have realised this and can calculate the approximate number of interchanges made, as these totals are very important to train operators and others involved in running services and stations.
Most of the stations on NR with very low usage have services which are of no practical use. Tees-side Airport has one Sunday am train in each direction and I believe one can no longer access the airport from it! Though why closure proposals for such basket cases are no longer pursued, I'm not sure-a proposal for Attercliffe Roads and Brightside in Sheffield was pursued without too much trouble in the early 90s and the rules haven't changed since apart from the abolition of area TUCCs.










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