Environmental campaigners today revealed the 10 most overcrowded trains in Britain, putting the 7.59am Durham to Newcastle service in at the number one slot.
The train operates at up to 88% overcapacity, closely followed by the 7.18am Cambridge to London Liverpool Street service and the 7.53am from Eccleston Park to Liverpool Lime Street at 85% overcapacity, according to Transport 2000.
Transport 2000 will collect evidence from the 10 routes over the next two weeks to present to the transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, before the government's rail strategy report expected to be published this summer.
The government wants more people to use public transport as part of its strategy to tackle climate change but the survey shows many services are struggling to cope with existing passenger numbers.
The other services in the top 10 are:
· 5.21pm Cardiff to Maesteg, 78% overcapacity;
· 8.14am Humphrey Park to Manchester Oxford Road, 75% overcapacity;
· 8am Morpeth to Newcastle service, 58% overcapacity;
· 7.31am Barnsley to Leeds service, 57% overcapacity;
· 7.14am Sheffield to Leeds train, 53% overcapacity;
· 4.33pm Sutton to Luton service, 50% overcapacity;
· 7.26am Northampton to Birmingham New Street, 45% overcapacity.
Julia Thomas, Transport 2000's public transport campaigner, said poor government planning was as much to blame for the overcrowded conditions as the rail operators.
She said: "It's very easy to blame rail operators for overcrowding problems, but actually a lot of it is down to the government's rail policy.
"They have issued 'no growth' franchises for the past 10 years and they've been promoting a policy of fares hikes to get people to travel off-peak, but passengers really don't have that much flexibility. In addition, the very short time periods covered by franchise agreements do not encourage any infrastructure investment by the rail operators."
Earlier this month the government announced it would buy 1,000 extra train carriages between 2009 and 2014 to ease sardine-like conditions on the worst affected routes. But the new carriages will not to be available until near the end of the decade at the earliest, despite expectations that train usage will rise by 30% by 2020.
A Department for Transport spokesman today said "the first of the new trains will be put into use as soon as possible on the busiest parts of the network".
A survey by the rail watchdog Passenger Focus earlier this year found that only 60% of rail users believe there is sufficient room for the passengers to sit or stand. The poll highlighted growing discontent over train capacity with a smaller proportion of respondents saying there was enough room on carriages than in the previous survey.
