The topic of the city’s transport network will never fail to get a Londoner talking. We can’t live with it; we definitely can’t live without it, and – let’s face it – we all have something to say about it. Day in, day out, we squeeze ourselves into those carriages; encountering an outrageous number of armpits and elbows along the way. I know what you’re all thinking, though: which tube journey is actually the busiest? Well, folks – the wait is over and you’re about to find out.
Transport for London has very kindly released the 2023 London Underground datadetailing the tube journeys that were made by the most people. And diamond geezer has saved us all the trouble of having to trawl through it, because – you know – diamond geezer by name, diamond geezer by nature.
So, as you can see, the most popular journey between two stations was from Liverpool Street to Tottenham Court Road. 1,066,493 passengers took that journey last year. Only 994,598 people made the return journey back to Tottenham Court Road, though. Should we be concerned by that? Perhaps. The data doesn’t show which of those journeys were made on the super speedy Elizabeth line (2 stops) and which were on the slightly slower Central line (5 stops).
The Waterloo & City line takes spot two and three on the list. 1,037,616 passengers took the journey from Bank to Waterloo last year, and 1,011,817 did the journey in the opposite direction. The Waterloo & City line is only open five days a week, compared to the seven days a week that the Elizabeth and Central lines run, so technically speaking – the journey between Bank and Waterloo tops the charts as the busiest journey.
Stations on the Victoria line account for half of the top ten journeys, so you can expect to feel extra squashed when hopping on the viccy line. Don’t you just love being a Londoner?
Read the full FOI request on TfL’s website here.
