A village train station has ranked as the least used station in Oxfordshire, new figures show.

New figures from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) show the busiest and quietest stations in the county, with Oxford ranking the busiest station.

All stations in the county have seen a steady rise in passenger numbers, data from April 2022 up to March this year shows.

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Oxford was the busiest station with more than 6.6 million entries and exits, ranking it as the 58th most-used station in Britain.

The least used station was Finstock, with 706 entries and exits through the station gates in the year to the end of March. Nationally, Finstock ranked as the 2,528th most used station. 

For comparison, the busiest station in the country was London Liverpool Street with 80.4 million entries and exits in the period.

Here are the five busiest and quietest stations in Oxfordshire ranked.

Busiest

  1. Oxford - 6,581,606 entries and exits in April 2022 - March 2023 
  2. Didcot Parkway - 2,329,704
  3. Banbury - 1,813,406
  4. Bicester Village - 1,610,596
  5. Haddenham and Thamew Parkway - 654,532

Quietest

  1. Finstock - 706
  2. Combe - 1,398
  3. Ascott under Wychwood - 1,628
  4. Shipton - 2,354
  5. Appleford - 7,234

Liverpool Street in London overtook Waterloo as the most-used station in Great Britain, which the ORR attributed to the opening of London's latest train service, the Elizabeth Line.

Waterloo had been the busiest station in the country in all but one of the previous 18 years, but it even dropped to third in the year to March behind Paddington, also on the Elizabeth Line.

The busiest stations outside London were Birmingham New Street, Leeds and Manchester Piccadilly.

Glasgow Central was the most used station in Scotland, and Cardiff Central topped the list in Wales.

The least used station that was open throughout the whole year was Denton in Greater Manchester, with 34 entries and exits.

Teesside Airport station in Darlington recorded two entries and exits, but its once-a-week Sunday service was suspended in May 2022 after the platform was judged to be unsafe.

In total, there were 2.5 billion entries and exits across Great Britain in 2022-23, a significant increase from 1.8 billion the year before, but still below the 3 billion entries and exits in 2019-20, before the coronavirus pandemic.

Michael Solomon Wiliams, campaigns manager of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: "It’s encouraging to see that station usage is on the rise, but to continue this upward trend and surpass pre-pandemic numbers, rail needs to be better value and more reliable.

"Instead of implementing another record-high increase, the Government should freeze rail fares as it has fuel duty and make green public transport cheaper".