Australian public transport patronage in medium capital cities

[TP]

We hear a lot about public transport in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide and I thought I'd catch up on how it's progressing, particularly with Queensland's introduction of standard 50 cent fares. The three cities are all roughly a million apart in population, well below Sydney and Melbourne, but well above the largest major regional cities. However, the largest of those regional cities, Gold Coast, tends to be included with Greater Brisbane as part of the SE Queensland greater city. Brisbane's population is about 2.8 million, or, with Gold Coast, about 3.4 million. Perth's population is 2.4 million and Adelaide's about 1.5 million.

So with its population and 50 cent fares, SE Queensland should be ruling the patronage roost, but Perth somehow maintains its irritating habit of thrashing Brisbane for public transport patronage.  Perth's latest available annual financial year patronage is 144 million, comprising 60 million by train, 83 million by bus and 870,000 by ferry.

Brisbane-Gold Coast patronage is 96 million, comprising 27 million by train, 59 million by bus, 6.6 million by tram and 3.5 million by ferry. Both Queensland and WA public transport are recovering from the covid slump, but Adelaide is still slower, with a total of 67 million, comprising 12 million by train, 46 million by bus and 8.8 million by tram. In 2019, prior to covid, Adelaide was moving 76 million, of which 15.6 million were by train, 51 million by bus and 9.4 million by tram. I recall that Gold Coast tram patronage topped 10 million pre covid, so both Adelaide and Gold Coast tram patronage are only slowly recovering - Sydney's L1 is in the same position.

Perhaps Queensland should try raising fares to Perth levels. It might work some magic! Seriously, it seems to support the point that quality of service is more likely to attract patronage than cheaper fares.

Tony P

[Brent Efford]

How does the modal split match up when passenger-km is the metric, rather than just the number of boardings? The latter might just measure many short journeys (generally by bus) where the non-PT alternative might just be walking or cycling. In urban areas with train services out into the region, the latter will take more passenger-km which would otherwise  be likely to be captured by car driving. 

In Wellington the rail spine carries about 70% of passenger-km and many bus boardings are for short trips along the Golden Mile which would otherwise be walked.

Brent Efford

[TP]

For some reason, passenger km figures are not published in Australia or, for that matter, in many parts of the world. Following the UITP,  most seem to prefer the measure of passengers per route km.

Tony P