THE amount of passengers using nearly all of the town’s railway stations fell last year.

Only one of the six stations in Warrington showed an increase in usage during 2018/19, according to figures released by the government’s Office of Rail and Road.

Sankey for Penketh suffered the largest decrease, with the amount of passenger numbers entering and exiting the station falling by 17.3 per cent.

The usage of Warrington Bank Quay and Warrington Central dropped by 3.7 per cent each, but passengers at Glazebrook were up 9.1 per cent.

Warrington Guardian:

Glazebrook station - picture by Google Maps

Northern Rail, which operates all of these stations apart from Bank Quay, blamed the decline on months of strike action by its workers, issues with its new timetables and ‘significant’ engineering works.

But it predicted that usage levels would grow again in 2019/20.

Regional director Chris Jackson said: “The problems faced by the entire rail industry in the north of England during 2018 are well known and account for the dip in passenger numbers.

“Problems with the introduction of the May timetable, some temporary timetables, significant engineering work at Liverpool Lime Street and industrial action all meant that the services Northern operated were heavily disrupted for several months.

“Though performance is still not where it should be, most notably due to network capacity issues in Manchester, we did see a significant upturn in passenger numbers during 2019.

“Almost 110 million passenger journeys were made on Northern services last year, an increase of around eight per cent.

“Brand new Northern trains are now operating from Warrington Central, Warrington Bank Quay and Warrington West – providing customers in the area with more comfortable journeys and better links to other towns and cities, as well as Manchester and Liverpool John Lennon airports, than ever before.”

Avanti West Coast, which operates Warrington Bank Quay, declined to comment when approached by the Warrington Guardian.

But it is understood that its performance was also affected as a knock-on effect of Northern Rail’s issues.

The figures in full:

Birchwood

Entries and exits in 2017/18: 687,758

Entries and exits in 2018/19: 626,728

Percentage change: -8.9

Warrington Guardian:

Glazebrook

2017/18: 45,432

2018/19: 49,574

Percentage change: +9.1

Padgate

2017/18: 155,582

2018/19: 142,856

Percentage change: -8.2

Warrington Guardian:

Sankey for Penketh

2017/18: 171,648

2018/19: 142,024

Percentage change: -17.3

Warrington Bank Quay

2017/18: 1,390,485

2018/19: 1,339,634

Percentage change: -3.7

Warrington Guardian:

Warrington Central

2017/18: 1,764,021

2018/19: 1,699,514

Percentage change: -3.7

Warrington Guardian:

A total of 491,684 passenger interchanges were made at Warrington Bank Quay, with 347,751 at Warrington Central.

No data is yet available for the newly-opened Warrington West Station.