It has been great to see the Rail Delivery Group highlight the importance of Railway Stations for independent businesses up and down the country through this year’s World Cup of Stations.

This year’s world cup shines a light of the small businesses based in and around rail stations throughout the UK with three stages taking place over the course of this week and the winner to be announced on Tuesday 22nd October.

We have decided to join in by analysing the number of independent stores within walking distance of each of the semi-finalists. To do this we extracted the road network and shop location data produced by Ordnance survey from DataCutter and narrowed down the shops to local businesses. We then used TRACC to look at the walking accessibility from each railway station and how many stores landed within this area.

We can’t wait to find out the winner next Tuesday!