In Victoria we’ve got free public transport from 31st March to 30th April, as a response to high petrol prices.
This has attracted widespread attention from around the country, with pressure on other states to do the same (only Tasmania has), and even worldwide interest, such as this BBC story.
Part of the problem with this issue is that “Free Fares!”, while costly, is a simple thing to say and to do, but it’s complex to predict or measure the precise effects and benefits.
It’s not like the entire PT network is Overloaded/Inadequate/Frequent/Has space to spare (all things you’ll hear people claiming). There are also claims that Victoria’s fares are expensive, and cheap.
All these things are true. It’s different at different times, places, days, and for different types of trip. Some services are good, some are not. Some are crowded, some are not. Short trips are expensive, long trips are cheap.
Observations
First, in the absence of much solid data, some anecdotal observations so far.
More people are using PT. No surprise. Parts of the system are clearly busier, especially trains and trams.
For the most part we don’t know by how much yet, nor which routes and modes are affected the most.
Except… V/Line is getting hit. And for that we do have some stats, thanks to this Age report:
- Good Friday up 72%
- Easter Saturday up 84%
- Easter Sunday up 118%
This has brought additional crowding on many V/Line services, basically because they don’t have a lot of spare capacity. In fact they already had crowding on many services (particularly on weekends) following the fare cut in March 2023.
Metro hasn’t suffered as much from crowding; an insider told me they believed Metro had more spare capacity. This isn’t necessarily the case in peak hour, but it looks like most of the growth has been at other times.
Trams: anecdotally busier. Buses: Depends on the route. Quiet, infrequent suburban bus routes (which is most of them) seem mostly unaffected.
Destinations such as Melbourne’s CBD seem busier, especially weekends and evenings.
Data?
Eventually we should see data. Obviously with no requirement to tap on with a fare card, precise patronage stats will be more difficult to get.
I’m told they can still get data via the Myki gates at stations – though not the standalone readers. Some trams and trains have sensors that can estimate loadings. On V/Line, conductors record numbers.
Raw data is massaged into estimates that are hopefully somewhat accurate.
Soon there’ll also be other data, such as the City of Melbourne pedestrian counters.
What does success look like?
The government rhetoric was pretty clear about what they’re aiming for:
Free public transport is a temporary measure to make it more affordable for people to choose public transport and help take more cars off the road.
— State Government press release 8/4/2026
Fundamental to success at taking cars off the road (which would provide fuel cost relief, cut traffic, cut fuel use, improve road safety) is whether it gets motorists to switch from driving. Mode shift.
Some people will assume that this happens when PT is free, but the evidence often says otherwise.
It’s also not clear how much of any shift would have happened anyway due to high fuel prices.
The Conversation published a study comparing Vic (free PT) with NSW (same fares as usual) and Qld (which has had 50 cent fares since 2024).
In Queensland, where fares were already heavily discounted, 21% reported shifting some commuting trips from car to public transport. This compares to about 24% in NSW and 26% in Victoria.
This is based on limited survey data, but the article highlights that good access to public transport has more influence than fares.
More on Queensland
Queensland is worth looking at further. They cut their fares to 50 cents in 2024. In Brisbane (which like Melbourne has a network of very good high frequency direct routes, and also indirect infrequent routes), patronage rose, but how much of that was mode shift from cars? Is there any data on that? Has it cut congestion as promised?
It appears not.
Hickman has studied the impact of Queensland’s 50c fare policy, which began 18 months ago. “What we have seen is that it does get people to take more travel with public transport but the number of people who are switching from motor vehicles to public transport is actually a very small percentage of it,” he said.
“The increase has been from people who used to bicycle or walk, or [who used] to not travel at all.”
This matches international experience (and Melbourne’s Free Tram Zone), which shows that a lot of the shift tends to come from walking, not cars.
Will we see the same in Victoria?
It’s not clear yet, but consider this:
- If people switch from cycling/walking to PT, then that is a problem if it crowds out other users who can’t cycle or walk. Tram passengers heading from Melbourne CBD to the suburbs deal with this regularly.
- If people make more trips (the CBD seems to be very busy at present) then it’s a form of economic stimulus, which is good, but it’s not actually reducing fuel demand.
- …and it may also be a problem if discretionary trips (“let’s catch V/Line to Melbourne for a day out”) are crowding out others (“I need to catch V/Line to Melbourne for a medical appointment/job interview”)
- If existing PT users get free rides, that’s providing Cost Of Living relief for them, but it may not reach the people most directly affected by high fuel prices
That last one is important. Remember the point was to “Take Pressure Off The Pump“.
How to get mode shift
We also know from previous research that when Australians choose driving over PT, it’s usually not because of fares. Fares can be a factor, but journey time and convenience are much more important.
Of course this is not a binary yes/no situation. Context is important, so extreme economic pressure from high petrol prices might make people more prepared to put up with longer travel times for a cheap or free ride.
It’s not that free public transport doesn’t have any benefits, but the question is does it have the most benefits for the money it costs?
To put it in perspective, the State Government says free travel is costing $71 million for a month. That’s about five times the PBO estimate to run all Melbourne suburban train lines to every 10 minutes.
You could add in trams and key bus lines and still be ahead. Unlike free fares, the expanded service would address the actual reasons that many people currently don’t use public transport.
It’s not that simple of course. Cutting or removing fares is very easy for the government to do in a hurry. And apart from service quality, other issues such as our lack of Tap And Go ticketing options also present barriers to usage.
Where to next?
Obviously we’ll need to wait for better data to better see what’s happened during this month-long experiment.
Will fares return at the end of April? This week’s oil refinery fire might make the optics of that difficult for the government – especially with ongoing concerns around the affordability of short trip fares in particular.
Rumours now abound that the government will announce a permanent halving of fares. This would make all trips more affordable… but a lower base fare that doesn’t change the inequity of flat fares. It just means we’ll probably be having the conversation about expensive short trips again a decade from now.
I look forward to better data and better analysis of how this has gone. But for now it seems that Free (or very cheap) PT can provide economic stimulus and Cost Of Living relief – just not targeted at those who actually need it.
Achieving mode shift, reducing fuel use (and traffic) and providing relief from car dependence needs more and better services.
Thoughts? Leave a comment below.
More on free PT:
- PTUA statement from the start of April, calling for more services and short distance fares
- NSW has not cut fares, but has announced they’re increasing Metro services. Alongside investment in recent years in frequent suburban train and bus services, I won’t actually be surprised if Sydney sees higher mode shift than Melbourne while fuel prices are high, despite the fares.
Update 19/4/2026: The State Government has extended the free travel period until the end of May. After that, fares will all be discounted by half until the end of the year (which takes it to just beyond the State Election).
They’re also saying that rail (Metro and V/Line) patronage was up by about 10% in the first fortnight of April. Caveat: that included Easter – the reduced weekday commuters would have outstripped the extra Easter travellers, so the total increase may be a bit higher. But it still shows how close to the edge V/Line has been on capacity.
23 replies on “The great experiment: April free fares”
Regarding Queensland’s 50 Cent fails, they are already showing the cost to public transport. Queensland government is actively cutting station staff. Whereas Melbourne has had for a long time Unman stations and no train guards, Queensland has always been fully staffed. This will be the consequences if free fares introduced.
Worth noting that WA went single fare at the start of this year ($2.80 using the transperth card anywhere)
There are many areas of Melbourne (and in particular Melbourne’s west where I am from) where car usage is common due to low frequency of buses (and the west tends to be a lower socioeconomic area than, say, Toorak which has good public transport and is a high socioeconomic area). I think that with the cost of living crisis (in conjunction with the War in Iran which is causing fuel prices to go up), we need more buses to run in places like Melbourne’s west, north and outer south east. But unfortunately, that involves spending money and planning; while free public transport (which benefits areas with good public transport) is a simple solution to a complex problem. It might be a sugar hit, but it gets costly in the end.
With the fares, I would go back to the zonal system which was fairer in my honest opinion (it is currently cheaper to go from Melbourne to Swan Hill than between two stops, which is unfair for people who only need to travel a short distance), but at the same time, bring back short travel fares (like we had with Metcard).
I moved 6 months ago from Hawthorn to Lara (yes, seriously). I also don’t have a car and am fighting the urge to buy one, but blimey, Vline and Jacinta Allan make it very difficult. In that time we have had one two week outage for the construction of West Tarneit Station (more on that later) where we got trains from Lara to Wyndham Vale, then a bus to Werribee, and then Metro to the city. This was basically hell on earth, making it doubly worse by the fact that there are perfectly good tracks all that way which VLine trains could have run on. The level of mismanagement and incompetence at VLine and lack of care for the customer experience is beyond belief. This is on top of the regular overcrowding which begins at Wyndham Vale and Tarneit when trains are running normally. Building ANOTHER station in between these two is genuinely mystifying. They better be going to whip up a metric gigatonne of rolling stock at the same time because otherwise this issue is just going to get worse and worse and worse. ALL trains need to be 6 carriages. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve caught a 3 carriage train from Lara (where I am lucky enough to get a seat) only for the train to become wall to wall packed at Wyndham Vale, and then for people to get left behind at Tarneit and Deer Park.
We are currently in another two week maintenance period, this time buses from Waurn Ponds to Wyndham Vale. In the middle of this free travel time. But the free Travel is having pretty much zero impact on this… the trains would be packed regardless. The other day our packed three carriage train stopped at Deer Park and a kid in Wheelchair wasn’t able to get on (he was in a queue behind Hungry Panda bikes… why these havent’ been banned is beyond me. They shouldn’t be on any trains, let alone Vline Trains!).
If you can’t tell I’m frustrated and angry. While it’s all sweetness and light when you finally get into the CBD and get to ride in a shiny new Tunnel, out in the West people are being treated as second class citizens with a second rate rail service. It’s disgusting.
Got to love how vline has been shifting so many of the intrapeak and offpeak services to 3 car sets.
Infrequent and half sized is just a wonderful place to be stuck on.
On the cost for 10 minute frequency factor if it is that low what prevents the government from even touching it?
A very well considered post Daniel. Anecdotally – V/Line reliability seems to fall over during free fare periods. I regularly travel Bendigo-Melbourne for work and have noticed a marked increase in delayed services this month, particularly in the afternoons. While the cost savings are no doubt appreciated by many, my personal preference is for a reliable, safe, and frequent service, and I’m quite happy to pay for that.
Today my wife and I even chose to drive to the city due to the additional crowding and potential disruption involved in taking public transport during the free period! If the government is going to be held to account for high quality public transport, there must be some cost to the user. The alternative is an “it’s free and you get what you pay for” mentality which only serves to justify mediocrity.
Yes the V/Line maintenance work is ill-timed this year but of course knocks some or all of the Geelong line out for two weeks at this time every year. V/Line’s replacement offering has appeared to get worse over time (even Warrnambool passengers this time have had to transit via Wyndham Vale) and the three-stage trip to Geelong for the West Tarneit station disruption earlier in the year was ridiculous but I imagine more of the same to come. As I write this I’m on a replacement coach from South Geelong after the football that is running express and direct to Southern Cross (if it ever gets out of Geelong) – an offering that seems to have been completely removed as part of normal replacements. I’ve travelled to Geelong twice this week – on Monday there was more demand than the one express Wyndham Vale to Geelong coach could handle so some of us had to take the scenic route, at least today they got a second coach to run express. Yes strictly they are replacing the train but they are not replacing the service. (And on Tuesday rather than head to Geelong I headed to my second office at Docklands – but of course the usual direct service between Footscray and Southern Cross was also replaced somewhat by buses.)
My most recent experience with Vline was last December (on a weekend, when fares were free) to/from Spilt Milk in Ballarat.
On the way back:
-No trains from Wendouree station, which would be more walkable for a lot of people and would have reduced pressure on shuttle buses to Ballarat station.
-The first service after the last act finished reached seated capacity well before departure time, and doors were locked. Staff were adamant that nobody could enter the train unless they had a seat (does this get enforced often?).
-Next service not due to depart until 50 minutes after the previous service. The rules from the previous service fly out the window and many people are sitting on the floor all the way to the city. Why the inconsistency from one hour to the next?
-A 20+ minute delay at Bacchus Marsh while an ambulance has been called. Can’t help wondering if the delays / overcrowding contributed.
As a tram driver it is bad. No extra running time constantly late. Management has said no adjustments unless running late for a meal. Shift going over 5 hrs eba states no more than 4.45
Lots of disruptions on the already overcrowded pakenham line this month.
Buses around the south east have no difference in customers as most people don’t pay in local buses anyway, with never an inspector to be seen
Imagine if the 1969 transport plan had laid out a dense network of public transport infrastructure, rather than a dense network of freeways. Since the 1970s there have been many oil shortages, and yet we’ve still progressed with a road based transport system.
While the free fares are novel for a month, nothing is really going to change until there is a concerted effort around urban planning and transport infrastructure investment. We keep building low density suburbs, we keep building stroads, we keep surrounding stations with carparks rather than high density communities, and we keep ignoring that induced demand from public transport and cycling is much better than induced demand from adding lanes to roads. :-(
@Dan, I think the reason why there is no high-density housing is because of Liberal supporters in the inner east and inner south east who prefers to keep their part of the world exclusively for the rich (the NIMBYs in places such as Toorak). I think we need to bite the bullet here and build high-density, especially around areas in which there is a high level of public transport (even if it offends the rich).
In addition, many new suburbs in the outer areas of Melbourne are not being designed for public transport, but for cars. There need to be more public transport in these areas, especially in light of the oil crisis brought about by the War in Iran.
The free transport is very good.
Totally anecdotal, but yesterday (Friday) I drove past the bus stop used in Beechworth by the bus that connects to the V/line train in Wangaratta just before the lunchtime bus appeared.
Normally you get at most three or four people with cases or bags waiting for the bus, but this time there were ten or twelve with more coming to join the queue.
Given that Beechworth is really too far from Melbourne for a day trip (although we have done it on occasion) I’m guessing some people are saving the cost of petrol while taking advantage of the free transport to have a few days away…
Passenger counts continue to be conducted during the free fares period.
I agree with your anecdotal assessment of an increase in inter-peak and off-peak usage. Perhaps this is an indication that we should move towards peak/off-peak pricing so people make better use of this extra capacity in future.
I also feel, and this is again anecdotal, that PT is safer when off peak & inter peak trains have more people on them. A young woman travelling home at 9pm has less to worry about if she knows there’s going to be safety in numbers and a good mix of people.
One final note: I wonder if this has changed the psychology of PT a bit. We are accustomed to thinking “I have a right to be here because I paid” and now instead are thinking “I have a right to be here because I am.” If this could be transitioned to “I have a right to be here because this is *our* train/tram/bus” perhaps we could see less antisocial behaviour and vandalism. And by giving everyone ownership over the space, it could put more pressure on DOT & pollies to run more/better services.
The Summer of Free Public Transport promotion from recent years in Perth gives us further data on the matter – January 2025 (free travel for the entire month) was widely touted as having the highest patronage figures ever recorded in the month of January.
It was also quite handily beaten in January 2026, when fares were reinstated. Because it turns out that the reopening and extension of the Armadale and Thornlie lines, along with improved buses in the same area (and other niceties like contactless payments) had a much greater impact on patronage.
Not to say I think the free travel was entirely a waste though; it’s entirely likely that some regular passengers now were originally enticed by the freebie and found the system to be better than expected, especially given recent improvements.
tl;dr, I think free transport is best used as a time-limited marketing gimmick following major improvements to services, *not* as a permanent policy.
Fares play a part, but accessibility is the greater driver of mode shift. My local station is West Footscray, which has excellent service levels by Melbourne standards. But it’s still a 30-minute walk away. The local bus, which services the Brooklyn and Sowefo areas, runs every 40 minutes. So at present, the station car park is full from very early in the morning as people drive to the station to take advantage of the free fares. The fare cut has moved people from car to PT, but only for half the trip; realistically, they’re saving more on car parking than on petrol. If the government was serious about encouraging a shift, service levels would also rise; both on the perpetually under-service rail lines in many parts of the city, but also on the busses that feed into the rail network.
Again an anecdote, this morning I saw two city bound trains depart towards Southern Cross at Castlemaine, both with almost seated loads, the first locomotive hauled and the second a six car VLocity. Two different overheard conversations indicated Australian Asian people were visiting Castlemaine because the trains were free.
A side note: My son had a MyKi Pass up until end May (University semester excl exams). He called and asked about a refund. No problem. They approved the refund. And BLOCKED the MyKi. Because their refund model is based on lost cards. So there is effectively a $6 fee to get a refund. Doesn’t smell quite right.
Good to see government announce an increase in rail services on some lines as part of the 2026-27 budget. Hopefully there will be a corresponding announcement about a massive increase in bus services to help Victorians travel to railway stations to catch those additional trains.
It’s definitely encouraging me to take the bus more, but at the expense of me either biking, walking or sometimes just staying home to avoid paying a full fare for a short ride. Don’t mind paying though for longer trips but sometimes I wish the government would introduce capped bus fares.
I’ve been taking the Vline this week from Wyndham Vale because Werribee line is closed for works. The trains are so full at Tarneit even during the middle of the day because they’re only running as 3 carriages even though it’s so much busier. They really need to run more trains with 6 carriages. Vline knew the geelong line would be busier but are only running trains with 3 carriages.