Campaigners hail another record breaking year for rail in Derry

Rail campaigners ‘Into The West’ are celebrating yet another record-breaking year for Derry’s railway station as it registered its highest ever passenger numbers.

Figures secured from Translink for 2024-25 (the 12 months up to March 2025) saw a record 963,312 journeys taken to and from Derry by train across that period. This represents a slight increase of 11,000 passengers compared to the previous year, which itself was also a record-breaker. It is also the highest number of trips that Derry’s railway station has ever catered for, solidifying its status as the North's seventh busiest station.

Analysis conducted by Into The West shows that Derry’s increase in rail passengers took place against a backdrop of falling rail usage across Northern Ireland as a whole – and particularly in Belfast.

Despite the opening of the new £340m Grand Central Station in Belfast in September 2024, Belfast city’s 11 railway stations experienced a 5% year-on-year decline in rail usage in 2024-25 – amounting to 600,000 fewer trips taken by train there. Northern Ireland as a whole saw a 4% year-on-year decline – though once Belfast was excluded, the rest of NI experienced a drop of only 2.6% (or 400,000 journeys).

Rail campaigners said the decline in rail passengers in Belfast across 2024-25 can be explained in part by a number of temporary station closures to facilitate creation of the new Grand Central facility. But it also reflects an ongoing pattern since the Covid-19 pandemic – whereby changing work habits have altered the nature of demand for public transport. Of Belfast’s 11 railway stations, only 2 catered for more passengers in 2024-25 than they did in the last full year before Covid (2018-19) – York Street (due to the creation of a new Ulster University campus on its doorstep) and Lanyon Place (which became Belfast’s main station during the final stages of the work to create Grand Central).

In addition, the new Grand Central also catered for three million rail passengers in the first six months after its public opening. All Belfast’s other rail stations are now carrying fewer passengers than they were prior to Covid, with an overall 11% decline in rail usage in Belfast since before the pandemic (vs 2018/19).

This reflects the impact that the rise of ‘Working From Home’ has had on travel patterns – resulting in a reduction in short and medium-distance weekday commutes in and out of Belfast. In contrast, Derry’s railway station has experienced a massive 78% increase in its passenger volumes since Covid (2024/5 figures versus 2018/19) – gaining an extra 422,000 users over that period.

Into The West Chair Steve Bradley commented: “Demand for rail continues to set new records every year in Derry, and it’s fantastic to see the city having almost a million passengers a year now. Back in 2016 Derry had the 17th busiest station in NI, catering for 324,000 journeys.

“A decade on and demand has trebled – following the creation of a fit-for-purpose station and the introduction of hourly services 6 days a week - making Derry now NI’s 7th busiest station. It‘s been a truly remarkable growth – the largest and most continuous increase in rail demand anywhere on the island of Ireland – and shows the positive impact that even fairly modest improvements in services can have here.

“Yet despite the proof that money invested in Derry’s rail unleashes huge increases in demand, the city still has one hand tied behind its back when it comes to services.

“Derry and the two other stations West of the Bann receive over 2,400 fewer trains a year than every station East of the Bann gets on the same line.

“For example - whilst 13 rail services in each direction call at Coleraine and all stations in the East on Sundays (one per hour), the three stations West of the Bann receive only six Sunday services (one every two hours). Whilst there are four trains a morning from Coleraine and every station East of the Bann which reach Belfast before 9am for work or for study, Derry has only one such service.

“And whilst the last evening train from Belfast to Derry leaves at 9:10pm Mondays to Saturdays (7:10pm on Sundays), every station as far as Coleraine in the East benefit from later services up to 10:40pm.

“None of this is the result of anything major or structural. It is entirely due to timetable choices made by Translink and the Department for Infrastructure (DFI) over the last number of years, who have decided to blatantly discriminate against Derry and the West when it comes to rail services.

“We have been told that £1m is needed to end this discrimination, which is a relatively small sum in infrastructure terms. Yet Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins is refusing to allocate that money from her own budgets, and also refusing to secure it from her Sinn Féin Finance Minister colleague instead.

“Translink are also refusing to use their budgets to end this blatant regional discrimination, even though the cost of fixing it would add only eight pence to every rail ticket sold across NI.

“Unfortunately no-one with the power to end this timetable inequality against Derry and the West is prepared to stop it, so they are all complicit in such blatant regional discrimination.”

Mr Bradley continued: “The fact that this discrimination continues whilst Derry is the star performer on the island’s rail network shows that Translink and DFI are more interested in shoveling investment towards Belfast than they are in supporting places where demand for rail is actually growing.

“Over a third of a billion pounds has been spent on a single new transport facility in Belfast whilst that city has been haemorrhaging rail users post-Covid – yet they are refusing to spend just £1m to end their longstanding dscrimination against Derry and the West.

“This blatant inequality exposes the lie behind Stormont’s talk of regional balance. We estimate that equalising rail services East and West of the River Bann on the Derry-Belfast line would add a further 250,000 passengers a year to rail demand from NI’s second city. No other investment in NI would deliver such a large increase in public transport usage for such a small sum of money.

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“So the Sinn Féin Infrastructure Minister has a very clear choice. She must now bring her Department’s blatant timetable discrimination against Derry and the West to an end. Or if she isn’t prepared to secure the relatively small sum required to stop this unequal treatment of Derry and the West, then she will have to take personal and political responsibility for it.”