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Passenger numbers soar at Birmingham's New Street Station

Passengers crammed into rush-hour trains will be little surprised to learn that the busiest rail stations, including Birmingham New Street, are getting ever-more crowded.

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The number of passengers travelling through New Street rose by 8.3 per cent to 34.75 million last year, new figures reveal.

The railway station was the eighth busiest in the country.

It comes as the staff at New Street prepare for another busy weekend with thousands of extra people arriving in the city for the Frankfurt Christmas Market.

Extra security staff have been drafted in to provide crowd control but last weekend the station struggled to cope with passengers forced to queue up outside the station after managers were forced to limit access to the concourse and platforms.

People took to Twitter to voice their complaints including Philip McAllister who claimed his five-year-old child injured in the crush.

The crowd control measures will be in place at the station, which is under-going a £600 million transformation, from 3pm tonight.

The latest figures from the Office of Rail Regulation, show some London stations saw upwards of eight per cent more passengers last year, with the total for the busiest of them all - Waterloo - approaching the 100 million mark. Of the 10 busiest stations, Euston had the largest increase last year, rising 9.4 per cent.

The only non-London stations in the top 10 were Birmingham New Street and 10th-placed Leeds, where numbers were up 5.3per cent to 27.73 million.

The figures were based on estimates of entries and exits at stations for the period April 1 2013 to March 31 2014.

On this basis, Waterloo was the busiest station with 98.44 million passengers - a rise of 2.6 per cent on 2012/13.

Next was Victoria, where numbers rose 5.2 per cent to 81.35 million, with Liverpool Street third with a rise of 7.8 per cent to 63 million.

Other busy stations in 2013/14 included Glasgow Central (27.15 million passengers), Edinburgh (20 million), Brighton (16.94 million), Gatwick Airport (16.18 million) and Glasgow Queen Street (15.76 million).

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