Britain’s worst railway station for delayed trains was today revealed to be Lancaster with nearly two thirds of all services arriving there late.
The station, which is used by 2.1million passengers a year, sees 63.5 per cent of its trains arriving late, based on an average punctuality over the past year.
The figure rises to 72 per cent when only counting peak trains at Lancaster, which is a stop on the West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Glasgow.
1) Lancaster is Britain’s worst railway station for delayed trains with 63.5 per cent arriving late
2) In second place was Wakefield Westgate, which has 63 per cent of its trains delayed
The data was revealed in a Freedom of Information request to Network Rail for punctuality at Britain’s 2,566 train stations from January 2019 to last month.
Lancaster was followed by Wakefield Westgate, which has 63 per cent of its trains delayed, and Durham and Manchester Oxford Road, both with 62.8 per cent.
Meadowhall in Sheffield, Smethwick Galton Bridge in Birmingham, Inverkeithing in Fife and Stalybridge in Greater Manchester all have figures above 60 per cent.
The other stations in the top 15 most delayed are Huddersfield, Birmingham New Street, Darlington, Sheffield, Wakefield Kirkgate, Wolverhampton and York.
3) Durham station on the East Coast Main Line has 62.8 per cent of its train services delayed
4) Manchester Oxford Road station also sees 62.8 per cent of its railway services delayed
But at the other end of the scale, Cardiff Bay – which runs a shuttle service to Cardiff Queen Street – is Britain’s most on time station with just 6.4 per cent of trains late.
But at the other end of the scale, Cardiff Bay – which runs a shuttle service to Cardiff Queen Street – is Britain’s most on time station with just 6.4 per cent of trains late.
Other stations with impressive records are Falmer in East Sussex, with 6.9 per cent, while Chingford and Heathrow Terminal Five in London both have 9.1 per cent.
Kirkdale in Liverpool and Highbury and Islington in North London both have a lateness record of 11.3 per cent, while Ayr in Scotland is at 12.6 per cent.
5) Meadowhall Interchange on the outskirts of Sheffield has 62.5 per cent of its trains delayed
6) Smethwick Galton Bridge station in Birmingham has a delayed trains percentage of 60.7
Eight c2c stations in Essex are in the top 20 most on-time – Chalkwell, Benfleet, Leigh-on-Sea, Basildon, Shoeburyness, Pitsea, Laindon and Thorpe Bay.
And there are three further London stations in the top 20 most on-time – Upminster, which is also a c2c station, nearby Gidea Park and Moorgate.
The data was compiled by York-based staff management software firm RotaCloud which also unveiled a searchable ‘lateness checker’ which ranks all the stations.
Co-founder James Lintern said: ‘Being headquartered in York, a city notorious for problem commuting and 15th on the list of unreliable stations, our staff have had issues getting into the office on time for a long while.
‘Our solution was to introduce flexible working, and as long as our staff are here for our core hours, they can now come and go as they please, something that has greatly relieved the pressure on our team.
‘We wanted to take a deeper look into the reliability of the country’s trains, and we built our ‘punctuality tool’ to highlight the sheer volume of delays, cancellations and general lateness in the rail network.
‘The country’s hardworking railway staff are spread paper thin, and we didn’t build this tool to give them more of a bashing than they’re already getting.
‘But if it can help illustrate the scope of this problem in a more relatable way, especially to other employers in some of the worst affected areas.’
A spokesman for the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operators and Network Rail, told MailOnline: ‘We know how frustrating delays can be which is why we’re doing more to tackle them from spending billions on major upgrades to ease congestion, to running public campaigns to reduce trespassing.
‘So that passengers know the level of service they can expect, the rail industry has adopted the most rigorous to-the-minute measure of punctuality in Europe and has launched an online tool so people can check the past reliability of their specific train, not just their station.’