BICESTER is Oxfordshire’s boom town when it comes to travel by train.

A new report shows that the town’s two stations – Bicester North, on the Chiltern Line, and Bicester Town, on the branch line from Oxford – saw a combined 17.8 per cent rise in custom last year.

At Bicester North, 1,126,838 passenger journeys started or ended there from April 2009 to March 2010, up 14 per cent from 984,806 journeys in 2008-9, while at Bicester Town, numbers rocketed from 59,964 to 104,788, up 75 per cent, thanks to extra trains to Oxford launched in May 2009.

The figures come from the Office for Rail Regulation’s annual station usage survey.

Business also soared at the Bicester Town branch’s other station, Islip, where 23,722 journeys started or ended in 2009-10, up 39.5 per cent from the 16,998 recorded in the previous 12 months.

The branch is set to become part of a second Oxford-London route from 2013.

Dr Ian East, from Islip, chairman of the Oxford-Bicester Rail Action Group, which represents passengers, said: “The growth we have seen shows we need local train services, as well as the profitable long-distance services.

“The enhanced service at Bicester and Islip has provided more opportunities for people to travel into Oxford, Reading or London throughout the day and to come back. If those opportunities weren’t there, the passengers wouldn’t be there and there would be a risk of a downward spiral, with fewer trains and fewer passengers.”

To encourage more customers to use the railway, Bicester Village shopping centre has invested £250,000 in shuttle buses to transport shoppers from the stations.

Community relations director Miranda Markham said: “We have witnessed unprecedented growth for the past three years, averaging more than 50 per cent per year, as rail travel continues to be the chosen mode of transport for many customers.”

Bicester’s mayor Richard Mould said: “It shows investment in services pays.”

Custom at Bicester North looks set for further growth later this year, when Chiltern Railways will launch speeded-up services.

Commuters will benefit from 45-minute journeys to and from London Marylebone, compared with a current fastest run of 56 minutes.

Banbury is another station set to benefit from the speed-up, with a 51-minute fastest journey to London, down from 70 minutes now. Use of county’s third busiest station grew by eight per cent in 2009-10, with 1,706,264 journeys starting or ending there, up from 1,579,510 in 2008-9.

At Oxford passenger numbers were up to 5,427,286 in 2009-10 from 5,080,934 in 2008-9. The county’s second busiest station, Didcot Parkway, saw a two per cent rise, with 2,524,260 journeys starting or ending there in 2009-10, up from 2,456,384 in the previous 12 months.

The county’s quietest stations were once again Finstock and Combe halts on the Cotswold Line.

traffic at Finstock was up by 42 per cent, with 1,458 journeys starting or ending there in 2009-10, compared with just 1,022 in the previous 12 months. However, it is still the county’s least-used station, just ahead of nearby Combe, where traffic fell 16 per cent, from 2,120 journeys in 2008-9 to 1,836 in 2009-10.

Both are served by just one train into Oxford and one train back, from Monday to Friday.

For the full report, see rail-reg.gov.uk/ server/show/nav.1529