Underground › Busiest linesData updated
How busy is each Underground line?
The Northern line carried the most journeys in 2019, 339.7 million, and the Waterloo & City the fewest, 17.6 million. Ranked by journeys, the long lines win; per mile of line the Victoria line is the busiest.
Journeys are TfL’s line boarders for 2019, the last full year before the pandemic: a passenger is counted once for every line they board, so someone who changes from the Northern to the Victoria line counts on both. The busiest stations are for 2025, the latest year TfL has published. Click a column heading to sort any table.
The lines ranked
Journeys in 2019
Millions of line boarders, to one scale. The Circle and Hammersmith & City are one bar because TfL gives one figure for both.
| Rank | Line | Journeys, 2019 (million) | Stations | Length | Million a mile | Million a station | Million a train in the fleet | Morning peak capacity used, 2019 unverified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northern | 339.7 | 52 | 37.9 miles (61 km) | 9.0 (5.6 a km) | 6.5 | 3.2 | 130% |
| 2 | Victoria | 302.0 | 16 | 13 miles (21 km) | 23.1 (14.4 a km) | 18.9 | 6.4 | 105% |
| 3 | Central | 301.1 | 49 | 46 miles (74 km) | 6.5 (4.1 a km) | 6.1 | 3.5 | 116% |
| 4 | Jubilee | 276.8 | 27 | 22.5 miles (36.2 km) | 12.3 (7.6 a km) | 10.3 | 4.4 | 115% |
| 5 | District | 251.2 | 60 | 39.8 miles (64 km) | 6.3 (3.9 a km) | 4.2 | 3.0 pooled | 85% |
| 6 | Piccadilly | 218.0 | 53 | 44.1 miles (71 km) | 4.9 (3.1 a km) | 4.1 | 2.5 | 91% |
| 7 | Circle + Hammersmith & City | 141.6 | 47 | see the two lines | – | 3.0 | 3.0 pooled | 88% |
| 8 | Bakerloo | 125.7 | 25 | 14.4 miles (23.2 km) | 8.7 (5.4 a km) | 5.0 | 3.5 | 95% |
| 9 | Metropolitan | 93.7 | 34 | 41.4 miles (66.7 km) | 2.3 (1.4 a km) | 2.8 | 1.6 | 97% |
| 10 | Waterloo & City | 17.6 | 2 | 1.5 miles (2.4 km) | 11.8 (7.3 a km) | 8.8 | 3.5 | – |
Length and stations are as on each line’s page; for the Circle with the Hammersmith & City the stations are the 47 different stops of the two together, and there is no length because they share track. The morning peak figure is the share of train capacity used in the busiest hour of the morning peak, from a news report of the Mayor’s statistics (it covers the Circle and Hammersmith & City together; the Waterloo & City isn’t given).
Journeys a mile of line, 2019
Total journeys divided by the line’s length, so a long line isn’t favoured for being long.
The busiest stations
Entries and exits at each station in 2025, from TfL’s annual station counts. Each count is for the whole station, not for the line: a station on several lines shows the same figure under each of them, and a passenger who changes there isn’t counted as entering or leaving. Where a station is also served by the Elizabeth line, the DLR or the Overground, TfL’s figure includes those passengers too. Powered by TfL Open Data.
On each line
| Line | Busiest station | Second | Third |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bakerloo | Waterloo 74.5 million on 4 lines | Paddington 58.0 million on 4 lines | Oxford Circus 52.3 million on 3 lines |
| Central | Tottenham Court Road 60.8 million on 2 lines | Liverpool Street 60.1 million on 4 lines | Stratford 53.2 million on 2 lines |
| Circle + Hammersmith & City | King's Cross St Pancras 73.6 million on 6 lines | Victoria 60.2 million on 3 lines | Liverpool Street 60.1 million on 4 lines |
| District | Victoria 60.2 million on 3 lines | Paddington 58.0 million on 4 lines | Bank and Monument 41.1 million on 5 lines |
| Jubilee | Waterloo 74.5 million on 4 lines | London Bridge 56.2 million on 2 lines | Stratford 53.2 million on 2 lines |
| Metropolitan | King's Cross St Pancras 73.6 million on 6 lines | Liverpool Street 60.1 million on 4 lines | Farringdon 42.0 million on 3 lines |
| Northern | Waterloo 74.5 million on 4 lines | King's Cross St Pancras 73.6 million on 6 lines | Tottenham Court Road 60.8 million on 2 lines |
| Piccadilly | King's Cross St Pancras 73.6 million on 6 lines | Green Park 29.6 million on 3 lines | South Kensington 27.8 million on 3 lines |
| Victoria | King's Cross St Pancras 73.6 million on 6 lines | Victoria 60.2 million on 3 lines | Oxford Circus 52.3 million on 3 lines |
| Waterloo & City | Waterloo 74.5 million on 4 lines | Bank and Monument 41.1 million on 5 lines |
Across the Underground
| Rank | Station | 2025 (million entries and exits) | 2019, second-hand (million) | Underground lines | Also counted: other TfL services |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Waterloo | 74.5 | 82.9 unverified | Bakerloo, Jubilee, Northern, Waterloo & City | – |
| 2 | King's Cross St Pancras | 73.6 | 88.3 unverified | Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria | – |
| 3 | Tottenham Court Road | 60.8 | 42.0 unverified | Central, Northern | Elizabeth line |
| 4 | Victoria | 60.2 | 85.5 unverified | Circle, District, Victoria | – |
| 5 | Liverpool Street | 60.1 | 67.2 unverified | Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan | Elizabeth line |
| 6 | Paddington | 58.0 | 48.6 unverified | Bakerloo, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City | Elizabeth line |
| 7 | London Bridge | 56.2 | 74.3 unverified | Jubilee, Northern | – |
| 8 | Stratford | 53.2 | 64.8 unverified | Central, Jubilee | DLR, Elizabeth line, London Overground |
| 9 | Oxford Circus | 52.3 | 78.1 unverified | Bakerloo, Central, Victoria | – |
| 10 | Bond Street | 42.3 | 37.5 unverified | Central, Jubilee | Elizabeth line |
| 11 | Farringdon | 42.0 | 25.9 unverified | Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan | Elizabeth line |
| 12 | Bank and Monument | 41.1 | 61.8 unverified | Central, Circle, District, Northern, Waterloo & City | DLR |
| 13 | Euston | 33.3 | 41.1 unverified | Northern, Victoria | – |
| 14 | Canary Wharf | 32.6 | 47.7 unverified | Jubilee | – |
| 15 | Green Park | 29.6 | – | Jubilee, Piccadilly, Victoria | – |
The trains each line uses
The trains each line has, from its rolling stock pages. The 1992 Stock runs on both the Central and the Waterloo & City, but as separate fleets. The S7 Stock’s 133 trains are shared by the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City, and nothing published splits them by line, so each of those lines shows the whole fleet and the journeys a train carried are pooled across the three lines’ journeys. A fleet is the trains a line owns, not the number running at once.
| Line | Trains | Fleet | Cars in a train | Million journeys a train in 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bakerloo | 1972 Stock | 36 trains | 7 | 3.5 |
| Central | 1992 Stock | 85 trains | 8 | 3.5 |
| Circle + Hammersmith & City | S7 Stock | 133 trains, shared by Circle, District and Hammersmith & City | 7 | 3.0 |
| District | S7 Stock | 133 trains, shared by Circle, District and Hammersmith & City | 7 | 3.0 |
| Jubilee | 1996 Stock | 63 trains | 7 | 4.4 |
| Metropolitan | S8 Stock | 59 trains | 8 | 1.6 |
| Northern | 1995 Stock | 106 trains | 6 | 3.2 |
| Piccadilly | 1973 Stock | 86 trains | 6 | 2.5 |
| Victoria | 2009 Stock | 47 trains | 8 | 6.4 |
| Waterloo & City | 1992 Stock | 5 trains | 4 | 3.5 |
How to read the ranking
- Journeys
- TfL’s line boarders, 2019, from the London Assembly’s table for Mayor’s Question 2022/0211 (labelled “Line boarders, NUMBAT”). One figure for every line, in the same year and on the same basis.
- Why not a bigger total?
- Line boarders count each line used, so lines that share passengers can’t be added up to a network total.
- Per mile, per station, per train
- Fairer to short lines, lines with few stops and lines with few trains. There is no published count of passenger-miles by line.
- Other totals
- The Assembly’s table changes basis in 2018, from TfL’s older survey-based estimates to its smart-card ones (NUMBAT). Some earlier published totals for 2018 run higher than the table’s figures (one report gave the Northern line 363 million against the table’s 339.6 million), and the change of basis may account for part of the gap.
Sources
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- Mayor's Question 2022/0211: Tube usage (with TfL line boarder data) London Assembly, 18 February 2022line boarders by line, 2019 (the table's own label: Line boarders, NUMBAT), the figures in data/underground_lines.json
- Usage statistics for London stations, 2025: annualised station entries and exits (AC2025_AnnualisedEntryExit_public.xlsx, version v08.2, 6 July 2026) Transport for London, 2026annualised station entries and exits, 2025, for every Underground station but those in 'no_count'; the modes in each count
- List of busiest London Underground stations Wikipedia, read 3 November 20262019 entries and exits for the 14 busiest stations (second-hand)
- Revealed: These are London's most overcrowded Tube lines City AM, 7 November 2019morning peak capacity used by line, 2019 (the Mayor's statistics, as reported)
- tube ridership (TfL freedom of information release, yearly ridership by line, 2018) Diamond Geezer, 27 November 2019an earlier published total for 2018 (the Northern line's 363 million), which runs above the Assembly table's NUMBAT figure for 2018
- Rolling Stock Information Sheets (4th edition) Transport for London (released under FOI-0237-2223)fleet sizes (see data/rolling_stock.json for each stock's sources)
- Morning peak capacity used (2019): a news report of the Mayor's statistics, not seen in a TfL or Mayor's table
- 2019 station counts: Wikipedia's table only; its 2025 column differs from TfL's file, so these may come from an earlier release of TfL's counts
- Fleet: the trains each line owns, not those running at once; the S7 Stock's 133 trains are shared by the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City and no source splits them
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