Manchester Oxford Road voted UK’s least commuter-friendly train station
By Grace Hilton
Manchester Oxford Road train station has been ranked as the UK’s least commuter-friendly station.
In the study carried out on office workers by TonerGiant, approximately 65% of trains passing through the station encounter delays or cancellations.
In spite of facing significant delays and cancellations, findings indicate that at Manchester Oxford Road, these delays typically fall within the 1-2 minute range, accounting for 21% of occurrences, while 11% of trains are subject to cancellations.
This development follows the 2018 revelation that Manchester Oxford Road station held the highest rate of cancellations and delays outside of London.
Delays on the Castlefield Corridor (the track that connects Manchester Oxford Road with Manchester Piccadilly) have been the subject of much government scrutiny, with a network rail report identifying the corridor as a “major pinch point”, due to many different services being funnelled down one track.
The report produced by Network Rail notes that a lack of infrastructure at the Castlefield junction is the primary cause of congestion at Manchester Oxford Road.
The Government in 2022 pledged £84 billion of investment in order to improve the region’s railways, with a new timetable that was introduced in December 2022 part of how it would tackle the problem.
However, in June 2023, plans for platforms 15 and 16 to be built at Manchester Piccadilly were scrapped by the government.
The new platforms were part a greater plan to tackle congestion on the Castlefield Corridor, and their scrapping leaves the Castlefield corridor with an uncertain future.
During a conversation with Ainslee, a student at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), he said that the station “can get crowded at peak times, and the station doesn’t look great to the eye. There’s one small Costa, but that’s about it.”
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