Mersey Rail, the dedicated commuter rail network serving Liverpool and its surrounding areas, needed a reliable, real‑time method of monitoring crowd levels at Sandhills Railway Station.
As the station provides a key transport link to the new Everton FC football stadium, match days bring thousands of fans through a single waiting area before accessing the platforms.
To maintain safety and ensure smooth passenger flow, Mersey Rail sought an automated occupancy solution that could accurately measure crowd levels, support staff decision‑making, and help enforce their strict 2,500‑person capacity limit.
On match days, fans queue in the outdoor waiting area at Sandhills Station before entering the station platforms to board trains.
There is a strict limit of 2,500 within the area so station staff must monitor this and open and close the entrance/exit gates as appropriate to maintain safe mumbers.
The system needed to:
After looking at the site plans and photos, Axiomatic visited the site to carry out a thorough survey to understand the layout, environmental conditions and operational needs.
From this survey we were able to put together a proposal for recommending outdoor Xovis 3D counters, chosen for their accuracy, reliability and suitability for outdoor environments.
Mersey Rail would design and fabricate overhead gantries, made to our specifications, to mount the counters overhead.
Mersey Rail’s on site team carried out the physical installation, with Axiomatic providing remote support. The whole system was installed, commissioned and calibrated in one day.
The main entrance required 2 counters in order to cover the width, with a suitable gantry overhead.
Mersey Rail fabricated a suitable, made to our specifications, in order to position the counters optimally.
Mersey Rail opted for Axiomatic’s cloud hosted service, eliminating the need for any on site servers. They simply browse online to their reporting dashboard.
They are also covered by our 12 month warranty and active support and monitoring of the system.
Staff now have:
Following the success of the system, Mersey Rail installed an additional counter and plans to expand monitoring at Aintree Station.
