MOBBERLEY station bucked a trend of falling rail passengers along the Mid Cheshire Line, new figures reveal.

Passenger numbers in the village rose by 3.6 per cent from 16,534 to 17,124 between April 2018 and March 2019 – a period including the disastrous timetable changes of May 2018 which saw mass cancellations of Northern services.

The tumultuous period is better reflected in figures at Knutsford, Plumley and Ashley stations, which saw drops of seven per cent, 9.7 per cent and one per cent, respectively.

For Knutsford, this meant a drop from 501,806 passengers in 2017/18 to 466,788 in 2018/19 – falling below the half-a-million mark for the first time since 2014/15.

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Meanwhile, stations served by the Crewe to Manchester line saw contrasting fortunes. Chelford and Holmes Chapel saw increases of 8.8 and 1.3 per cent, respectively, while Goostrey saw almost 4,000 fewer passengers – a drop of 8.6 per cent.

John Oates, chairman of the Mid Cheshire Rail Users Association said: “MCRUA are very disappointed but not surprised with these station usage estimates.

Knutsford Guardian:

“During this period the Mid Cheshire Line had six months of no trains on Saturdays due to the dispute with the RMT over conductors working the doors.

“With Saturdays normally a busy day and on other days an increase in late running and cancelled trains, this has provided continual bad publicity for our local rail network.

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“We are expecting the figures for 2019/20 to be significantly worse as, more recently, we have seen many more cancellations with passengers losing complete confidence in local services.

“Whilst there was a reduction in passengers using Knutsford station, which probably accounts for the increase in usage at Chelford, Knutsford still has close to half a million passengers using the station and is one of the few stations in the country with these passenger numbers and only an hourly service.

“This would not be acceptable in the south, so MCRUA continues to push for the franchise promise of two trains an hour and the doubling of services on Sunday.

“In the short term, we are still meeting with local Northern management as well as MPs along the line with our demands for an improved service that local passengers can rely on.”

The figures use estimates based on ticket sales.