Rail
Chapter 7
Chapter 7 aims to give an understanding of Australia's rail characteristics. This chapter provides information on rail lengths, rail interstate non-bulk freight, public transit patronage on rail and rail related expenditure. The data is sourced mainly from BITRE and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
- People in Melbourne use light rail more than any other city with 148 million passengers in 2022–23.
- People in Sydney use heavy rail more than any other city with 271 million passengers in 2022–23.
- In 2022–23 there were 35 billion dollars of public rail-related expenditure.
Figure 15 shows Australia's network of railways by gauge, breaking it down into different classifications. The lines shown here are the railways that were open for traffic at October 2022. The only change since 2021 was the opening of the Forrestfield-Airport Link (Metronet) line in Perth.
Figure 15 Australia's railways, by gauge
Figure 16 shows rail public transport patronage by million passenger movements. Passenger movements were trending upwards in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide before starting to fall sharply in 2019–20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While Melbourne's passenger numbers began to recover in 2021–22, Sydney's continued to decline rapidly, recording a larger proportional fall than in each of the two preceding years. This refers to all trips on suburban rail networks and is based on reporting from train operators.
Figure 16 Public transit patronage on heavy rail, Australian capital cities
