Passengers
Chapter 5
This chapter provides information on passenger transport activity, including nationally, by city pair, by capital city and by method of travel to work. The data in this chapter comes from a variety of sources, being from BITRE’s estimates, the ABS’ Census Basic Community Profiles Series and from Tourism Research Australia.
- 158 billion passenger kilometres were travelled by car on capital city roads in 2022-23.
- 10.5 billion passenger kilometres were travelled on heavy rail networks in 2022-23.
- 164 billion passenger kilometres were travelled by car on capital city roads in 2018-19, prior to any COVID impacts.
- 14.8 billion passenger kilometres were travelled on heavy rail in 2018-19, prior to any COVID impacts.
Figure 1 Australia’s National Passenger travel, 2022-23
Passenger transport activity (Figure 1) is measured by passenger kilometres (the number of kilometres travelled by passenger vehicles multiplied by the number of occupants in the vehicle).
Figure 2 Australian domestic passenger task, by mode of transport
The Australian domestic passenger task is dominated by road transport, mainly passenger cars (Figure 2). Passenger travel on other modes has generally been increasing, albeit with a dip over the pandemic period. Air travel expectedly fell most significantly, however in 2022-23 it had recovered to near its pre-pandemic level.