Yesterday Daniel Bowen cited statistics that showed that Australia's busiest tram lines were no longer in Melbourne. Indeed three of the top four top performers were new systems in Sydney and the Gold Coast. See Daniel's item for some possible reasons for this.
Benefits of frequent all week service
The ideal for any major public transport line is that you should be able to turn up at any reasonable time (that I will define as 6am to midnight 7 days) and expect a service to arrive within a short time without checking a timetable. The February 2026 timetable introduced this concept for the central section of the Metro Tunnel between Dandenong and West Footscray. The 22 stations in this section enjoy a timetabled maximum wait of 10 minutes or less for 130 hours of the week.
This 'always there' frequent service encourages a completely different attitude towards public transport by transforming the user experience. This includes including it being useful for trips more diverse than the weekday peak period city commute (which has long been declining as a proportion of all trips).
On a broader level a frequent network can shape investment and personal decisions like where people choose to live and how many cars households own (which further grows patronage). Much more than in cities like Perth, Melbourne has a significant inner suburban demographic that would be favourably disposed to not driving if public transport was reasonably frequent over wide hours. For such a group maximum waits (even at 11pm) are likely to have an out-sized influence on their decisions. And maximum waits are relatively cheap to reduce, especially if they need only a few hours extra per week of one or two extra trips per hour to cut.
Everyone will have different views as to what comprises 'turn up and go'. Factors like the length of the trip, if a connection to another route is involved, willingness to walk and the availability of alternatives are all important. But, with one big city exception, there is, based on what currently operates, general agreement on what the maximum wait should be for light rail routes in Australian cities.
Do you know what it is?
To help I've reproduced the tram route patronage graph with maximum waits annotated.
Melbourne stands out as the exception in all this. Its midday tram frequencies are comparable to the other lines. But after dark and (especially) on Sundays they collapse to 30 minutes, even on its busiest tram lines. Whereas, just like is done for their trains, Sydney has a maximum wait of half that or 15 minutes. The same is true for the Gold Coast and Canberra.
While I've marked Newcastle harshly (as their 30 minute gaps are at the extremities of the day) if anything I've been generous to Melbourne because many of their trams start well after 6am on Sundays, particularly in the outbound direction. However Melbourne has more lines than other cities and in central areas routes often overlap.
Reasons for Melbourne's long maximum waits
Sundays are one key reason for Melbourne's longer maximum waits than other cities. Take those away and maximum waits drop to 20 minutes (the standard service for most routes on Monday to Saturday evenings). That's Adelaide type maximum waits.
The 30 minute Sunday morning gaps reflect a history of opposition to Sunday service by the Protestant-dominated Tramways in the first third of last century. In the face of public pressure and a leadership change limited Sunday morning service based on 30 minute headways commenced in 1936 as a six month trial. Those same 30 minute headways have stuck for 90 years on most routes.
Sunday evenings, that other important time where most Melbourne trams run only every 30 minutes, have a different history. The churches were much more concerned about preserving the Sunday morning Sabbath than Sunday evenings. Sunday evening trams in Melbourne used to run as frequently as Sydney's, Gold Coast's and Canberra's do now but unreversed 1950s and 1960s service cuts ended that.
Melbourne's timetables have remained time capsules for decades due to historically low political interest in upgrading service levels for many years. Especially the type of service levels that could have been upgraded within existing infrastructure and fleet constraints.
Recent action to cut maximum waits
There have been no significant tram service cuts for a long time. There have even been some minor frequency improvements (most notably Friday and Saturday nights) on some routes. But these have not been enough to reverse the long-term (and continuing) per capita reduction in tram service levels.
The trend for Metro rail services has been more encouraging. For the first time in a while we're seeing concerted action to cut maximum waits to 20 minutes. This includes a start made to cut 30 and 40 minute maximum waits to 20 minutes for Pakenham, Cranbourne and Sunbury in the February 2026 Metro Tunnel timetable.
This will be followed by the implementation of similar for Craigieburn and Upfield (funded in the 2025 state budget). And then the 2026 budgeted upgrades including weekends on the Clifton Hill group and weeknights for the Burnley group.
By 2027 Melbourne's despised 40 minute gaps should be eliminated on all but the outer Hurstbridge line on the Metro network and weekends on the Melton line for V/Line. The main outstanding matters then become 30 minute maximum waits for the Clifton Hill group on weeknights, the Burnley group on weekend evenings and Sunday mornings and Belgrave / Lilydale for midday weekdays.
Trams and major bus routes could do with the same too!
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