Updated public transport patronage data has just been released, including for January 2026. This is particularly interesting given the Summer Start free weekend travel that applied during December and January.
Unfortunately the other data set that separates out patronage by days does not include weekend data for this period. It’s not clear if this is due to the free travel meaning Myki data isn’t available, or just a delay because they will try to tally it up from other sources. I might come back to that in a later post if an update emerges.
For now we’ll have to confine ourselves to the monthly data – which always moves up and down a bit due to different numbers of days (and weekdays) in each month – and different alignment of weekdays to months each year.
First, big picture. We know this story. Things were bubbling along nicely until 2020, when patronage fell away. It’s gradually coming back, but with changed travel patterns, probably won’t get back to 2019 levels any time soon, even with population growth.
Some observations:
- The numbers are up and down a bit each month. Some of it may be attributable to different numbers of weekdays, some to other factors such as major disruptions due to planned works.
- Since early 2022 patronage has been growing back
- Noticeable dip in early 2025, more or less in line with the usual January quiet period, but last year it extended into February
- Apart from that, at a high level the post-COVID growth may have levelled out since 2024?
For 2025 (including the Summer Start period), in the following two charts I’ve compared patronage each month to that of the previous year.
Given the data includes January 2026, I’ve gone one month either side of the calendar year, so it’s Dec 2024 to Jan 2026.
Here’s Melbourne metropolitan services (excluding V/Line suburban services, which are in the following chart).
What’s noticeable here:
- A noticeable dip in February 2025 vs 2024. 2024 was a leap year with 21 weekdays, and 2025 wasn’t, with 20. But bus being 12% lower and train 8% does seem odd – and as shown in the first chart, it was definitely a quiet month. There were some major rail works which may have contributed.
- October 2025 tram patronage was 15% lower than 2024, which is quite the variation. Major works for most of the month disrupting all Elizabeth Street routes would have contributed.
- The final two points on the right are December 2025 and January 2026, the Summer Start, with free weekend travel as the State Government encouraged people to explore the Metro Tunnel. Rail patronage took off… but tram and bus didn’t.
- Edit: Could it be that tram and bus data for weekends is completely wrong and hasn’t been corrected to take into account the free travel?
Here’s regional:
- Again, some variation here, but regional (town) buses were mostly down in 2025 vs 2024
- Patronage on trains and coaches higher through 2025 than in 2024 may have been the ongoing patronage growth following the V/Line fare cut in March 2023
- (V/Line trains for CY 2025: 25.7m; 2024: 24.1m; 2023: 20.3m)
- And regional trains unsurprisingly had more patronage in December 2025 when weekend fares were free
- But regional trains and coaches took a dive in January 2026, due to extensive service closures and travel restrictions from extensive fires through much of Victoria
I’m still hoping the weekend data for December and January is released so we can more clearly see the effects of free weekend fares.
In the meantime, maybe some of you have better memories than me and can point to specific events that might have influenced this data. What else can you see here?
Source:
12 replies on “Patronage during 2025”
Perhaps you have this data already and could post it on Facebook? I’d like to see a chart showing V/Line patronage since early 2020. Before the fare cut that you mention, my only experience with V/Line was a few times to Geelong. Since then, I’ve visited 70+ regional stations, including 2/3 of paper ticket stations. It’s inexpensive and good entertainment for our young children, but I can’t taking all these trips before the fare cut.
I wonder if there are stats for each train line. I am on the Pakenham line and I find compared to pre Covid – the peak periods have a wider span now, and numbers are more than pre Covid for those peak periods
Derailment at Clifton Hill
I wonder how this is calculated as I feel more and more people are choosing to fare evade. the government claims something like 96% fare compliance across the network and that is simply not true. trains may have something close to that but for trams and busses I would guess that figure would be closer to if not lower than 50% which might suggest ridership numbers are being significantly underrepresented.
@Anonymous, thanks, I’ll take a look at that data and do a chart in a future post.
@Janey, unfortunately they don’t publish monthly data by train line, though there is annual data of individual station entries, and from memory there is some peak vs off-peak vs evening vs weekend separation. That’s an interesting observation, will be worth looking into.
@Charis Cheng, the Clifton Hill/Rushall derailment was on 13 July 2025; it should not have affected Metro train patronage in Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov.
@george leeton watts, they say it’s a combination of Myki data and patronage surveys (as they know the Myki data is incomplete).
The purpose of the patronage survey is to determine the transaction rate, which is the percentage of passengers who โtouch-onโ when they travel. Ticketing transactions are boosted according to the transaction rate to provide an estimate of total patronage.
Canโt see any of the photos
(On safari on iPhone if this helps)
It would be great if you could provide a similar update on patronage for other Australian cities too. I was in Newcastle, NSW over the weekend using light rail and buses and both seemed well used.
None of the three charts are showing for me in either Firefox or Chrome
@Chris, @Paul – there have been some web host issues recently that broke some images. The ones on this post should be okay now, though there may be some others elsewhere with problems. Thanks!
@Andrew, I will try and do some updates from interstate data soon; thankfully some states update their stats more regularly than Victoria.
Interesting to see patronage still down for Melbourne. Here in Perth, PT patronage seems to have rebounded from COVID and is at its highest ever (albeit with lower per capita ridership).
FY 2018-19 saw 141,454,423 trips (79,266,899 bus/61,539,510 train/648,014 ferry).
FY 2024-25 saw 148,717,495 trips (85,878,594 bus/61,903,744 train/935,158 ferry).
Data so far for FY 2025-Feb 26 shows 101,539,806 trips (53,582,923 bus/47,339,738 train/617,145 ferry) with 4 months of data to go. Perth might crack that 150 million trips mark, especially with PT up 10.9% last week compared to the same period last month.
I agree the graphs can be a bit surprising and not easily explained. With so many line shutdowns in regional rail and other metro works, surely that has some sort of influence. True a rail passenger would just take the substitute bus and that would be recorded on Myki data but I do wonder if regional passengers get fed up and just drive or find some other way.
@Tommo – I can’t remember the last time I travelled on a replacement bus that had a working Myki reader on it, so they aren’t getting any data that way.