V/Line was a mess this week thanks to using an ARTC system that relies on Telstra mobile, which had a major outage on Wednesday. Plus apparently the backup satellite connection didn’t work because the on-train equipment thought the mobile connection was fine.
It raised an interesting question: how many people are affected by a major outage like this?
The annual patronage (for regional train and coach, 26.4 million in 2024-25, expected 29.1 million in 2025-26) doesn’t really tell us.
But the monthly patronage data tells us that Regional Train (eg V/Line) had about 76,000 boardings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in March 2026. If we assume each passenger is making two trips per day, that’s 38,000 people.
So over two days, around 150,000 trips affected. (Services came back around lunchtime on day two, but many people would have avoided travel that day.)
Related question: what proportion of V/Line passengers are actually making suburban trips vs regional?
We can work it out from the data of passengers by station (for FY24-25) which shows a total of 19.6 million station entries.
- If you exclude Southern Cross it’s 13.1m. (The data already excludes inner city and interchange stations such as Footscray and Dandenong.) This gives you V/Line boardings everywhere except the City – and let’s assume for a moment that most people travel to and from the City.
- If you only count the V/Line suburban stations in Melbourne it’s 5.7m
- Divide 5.7 into 13.1 and that gives us the proportion of suburban boardings to the City: 44%.
- Total suburban passengers are likely a bit lower than that, with some people from Melton and Wyndham Vale etc travelling outbound to regional Victoria. Perhaps we can say about 40% of journeys.
So which are the busiest stations? From the data, here’s the top 20, with stations in suburban Melbourne marked with an S.
V/Line busiest stations
| Station | Entries 2024-25 | Suburban? |
|---|---|---|
| Southern Cross | 6,506,100 | S |
| Tarneit | 1,717,700 | S |
| Wyndham Vale | 1,128,400 | S |
| Geelong | 974,250 | |
| Melton | 806,050 | S |
| Ballarat | 684,050 | |
| Deer Park | 636,300 | S |
| Bendigo | 489,350 | |
| Rockbank | 399,800 | S |
| South Geelong | 356,100 | |
| Bacchus Marsh | 346,950 | |
| North Geelong | 336,000 | |
| Lara | 333,400 | |
| Cobblebank | 325,300 | S |
| Caroline Springs | 290,700 | S |
| Waurn Ponds | 260,250 | |
| Castlemaine | 225,300 | |
| Wendouree | 198,950 | |
| Donnybrook | 191,400 | S |
| Marshall | 186,750 |
It’s not hard to see why there’s a push to electrify more lines in Melbourne’s west, to get some of those very busy stations onto the Metro network, which with its higher capacity trains and better frequencies will be better able to cope.
Melton is Australia’s fastest growing Local Government Area, so the sooner Melton electrification happens, the better.
As for the disruptions this week, they can blame Telstra all they like, but V/Line and the government need to figure out what needs to happen to ensure that if another mobile outage like this occurs, the trains keep running.
8 replies on “V/Line: How many passengers?”
I’m astounded that there isn’t another way of monitoring V/line trains on the network. Relying on only one system seems like asking for trouble. 30 years ago mobile phones didn’t exist, yet we still had passenger trains running all across the state.
there’s a push to electrify the vline lines?
the only push seems to be airport trains (one from both sides and a pointless goal of running 2 or 3 9 car vlocities (when not broken down or just missing)
So there isn’t a master switch to manually turn the system over to satellite coverage, instead it’s automated, and failed because of intermittent service?
I wondered about the huge gap between Victorian and New South Wales regional passenger numbers, and I think VLine servicing suburban stations must be part of the answer.
So much disappointment in the current government for failing multiple times now to achieve the western rail plan and airport. The waste and cost overruns elsewhere on BigBuild projects has clearly sidelined or postponed what should have been dealt with long ago. If the SRL had been postponed instead to 2030 start, then a lot of metro and Vline service upgrades could have been achieved by now. It’s a stain on the current administration and with a likely change of government probably never going to be achieved for a decade or more. If I hear about another ‘plan’ I’ll be sick. There are plenty still sitting on shelves that can be resurrected again that already tell what needs to be done ad nauseam.
Sorry I went a bit off topic there. My point was in reference to the Vline station numbers on what should have been (by now) metro lines to Melton and WV and Wallan.
I’m curious to know why V/Line agreed to sign a contract which stated that only Telstra could be used for main communications and a backup with a different carrier wouldn’t be possible. The events of last week have shown that Telstra is not immune at all from avoidable outages which can affect millions of people.
People I know, in the industry, where rolling in laughter at V/Line for letting this happen.
My understanding is, the big risk factor, that required the closure of the railway network is, in case a motorist broke down on a level crossing, you did not have the means to alert nearby train, and warn them to slow down.
There was rumor that, V/Line Conductors need Telstra to communicate with their driver. From this, I presume that, V/Locitys do not have some hard-wired telecom service that they could use.
Now, one question to ask is, how many V/Line customers are going to die, because they missed vital test appointments, or vital life saving health appointments at hospitals around the state.
So, we much rather take the risk of, cancer victims being killed, versus having the remote chance that there may be a stuck motorist somewhere. You do the math.
Further to this, is it not possible that, trains can be instructed to do a go slow, or be prepared to stop at all crossings during such communication breakdowns?
@Jim, really, I think you need to calm down.