There were nearly twice as many standard class passengers as the registered capacity when the two-carriage 8.02am Chiltern Railways service arrived in the capital on a weekday, giving it a load factor of 196 per cent.
The Department for Transport (DfT), which published the data, said constraints on the number of available carriages limited the operator’s ability to cope with rising demand.
The 7.32am South Western Railway train from Woking to London Waterloo was the second most overcrowded train, with a load factor of 182 per cent when it reached its destination.
Other services in the top 10 most packed trains include:
– 3.08pm Great Western Railway train from Weymouth to Gloucester (load factor 178 per cent)
– 5.50am West Midlands Trains service from Wolverhampton to London Euston (load factor 171 per cent)
– 7.16am Great Northern train from King’s Lynn to London King’s Cross (load factor 165 per cent)
The DfT stated that the 10 most overcrowded trains represent “a small fraction of all services” and some of the figures are based on a single count.
Some 16.4 per cent of passengers were standing on trains serving major cities in the morning and evening peaks.
This was a fall of 0.4 percentage points compared with the previous year, driven by a decline of 0.6 percentage points in London.
The cities with the largest increase in passengers standing were Liverpool (up 2.5 percentage points), Bristol (up 2.4 percentage points) and Leeds (up 0.7 percentage points).
The collapse in demand for rail travel due to the coronavirus pandemic is not reflected in the figures.
