Many of the most overcrowded trains are on neglected regional lines that are not protected by the same minimum standards that apply to London commuter services, a survey has found.

Almost half the passengers on several routes into Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Cardiff are forced to stand for their entire journeys on 25-year-old two-carriage trains.

Among the ten most crowded trains, identified in a report by the public transport campaign group Transport 2000, only two were in London.

Yet London is the only part of the country where the Government measures overcrowding and requires train companies to keep it below a certain level. Elsewhere operators can save money by leasing fewer carriages, even when passenger numbers are growing rapidly.

Since privatisation a decade ago, passenger numbers on regional services have grown by 52 per cent compared with 48 per cent in London and the South East. The annual growth in the regions accelerated last year to 7.3 per cent. Across the whole country, the number of passengers is at its highest since 1946, when the network was twice as large. The present total is forecast to rise by another 30 per cent by 2016.

Almost all the carriages used in London are less than ten years old and are designed to carry large numbers of standing passengers, with clear space near the doors and plenty of handrails. In other parts of the country trains date from the 1970s and 1980s when no one envisaged that demand for rail travel would be so great. In Bristol, passengers are sometimes forced to stand in toilet cubicles because the narrow corridors are so crowded.

Most of the expansion projects planned by Network Rail, such as the £3.5 billion Thameslink upgrade and the £1 billion development of Waterloo station, are in the London area.

Julia Thomas, author of the Transport 2000 report, said: “There is a perception that overcrowding on trains is largely confined to London but our survey shows other parts of the country are also struggling to cope. It is scandalous that there are no government limits anywhere apart from London on what is deemed to be an acceptable number of people standing on a train.”

Even in London, the Government does not deem a train journey of up to 20 minutes to be overcrowded unless there are more than 35 people standing for every 100 sitting.

Mike Mitchell, head of railways at the Department for Transport, angered passengers in January by saying that it was acceptable to have to stand on trains for half an hour.

Anthony Smith, chief executive of Passenger Focus, the rail passenger watchdog, said: “We need proper measurement of overcrowding across the country to ensure that resources are targeted where they are most needed.

“The present system is crude and confined to London and presents only a partial picture of the problem.”

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