Report – Public Transport Patronage Recovery Strategy

Executive Summary

This report assesses the post-pandemic patronage position of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), a hypothetical agency responsible for metropolitan rail, bus, light rail and ferry services across a large Australian capital city, and sets out a strategy to rebuild patronage toward its pre-pandemic level. All figures are illustrative but internally consistent and are expressed in Australian dollars. In 2024 the network carried 502.5 million boardings, 83.8 per cent of the 600 million recorded in 2019. Recovery is uneven across modes, ranging from 82.0 per cent on metropolitan rail to 96.7 per cent on ferries, and the shift away from peak, city-centre commuting has lowered rail’s share of travel while lifting that of bus, light rail and ferry. The shortfall has weakened the agency’s finances: the farebox recovery ratio has fallen from 46.6 per cent to 36.4 per cent, cost per boarding has risen from A$2.93 to A$3.88, and the subsidy per boarding has grown by 57 per cent. The report identifies six interventions costing A$138 million per year that together are projected to add about 61 million boardings, closing roughly two-thirds of the residual gap and lifting recovery toward 96 per cent by 2028. It recommends reforming fares, reallocating service to match the new demand pattern, protecting frequency and coverage against a spiral of cuts, and embedding equity and network value in decision making.

Introduction

Public transport patronage across Australian capital cities collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic as lockdowns, health advice and the rapid adoption of working from home removed a large share of commuting trips. National monitoring shows patronage falling to well below half of pre-pandemic levels at the deepest point of 2021, followed by a partial and uneven recovery that has since plateaued below the 2019 baseline (BITRE 2023). The persistence of hybrid work is central to this pattern: the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that a substantial and durable proportion of employed people now work from home at least part of the week, concentrated among the office-based, city-centre workforce that once filled peak rail services (ABS 2024). The experience is common across comparable networks internationally, where discretionary and off-peak travel has rebounded faster than the traditional weekday commute (ITF 2021).

This report has three aims: to quantify the MTA’s current patronage and financial position against its 2019 baseline; to explain the drivers of an uneven recovery; and to appraise and cost a program of interventions capable of rebuilding patronage. The scope covers scheduled metropolitan rail, bus, light rail and ferry services; school and regional coach contracts and long-distance rail are excluded. The analysis draws on the agency’s own boarding and revenue reporting, framed against national data from the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, journey-to-work evidence from the Census, and the investment priorities set out by Infrastructure Australia (ABS 2022; BITRE 2022; Infrastructure Australia 2021).

Situation Analysis

Patronage by mode

Table 1 sets out annual boardings by mode from 2019 to 2024. Patronage reached its trough in 2021, when total boardings of 252 million were only 42 per cent of the baseline, before recovering to 502.5 million in 2024. The recovery rate against the pre-pandemic baseline is the central measure of progress and is calculated for each mode as boardings in the year divided by 2019 boardings. For metropolitan rail the 2024 recovery rate is 205 / 250 × 100 = 82.0 per cent, while for the network as a whole it is 502.5 / 600 × 100 = 83.8 per cent.

Table 1: Annual boardings by mode (millions) and 2024 recovery rate against the 2019 baseline

Note. Figures are illustrative and internally consistent for a hypothetical agency; they are not drawn from any actual network.

The uneven recovery has reshaped the composition of travel, measured by mode share, which is a mode’s boardings divided by total boardings. Metropolitan rail, the mode most dependent on peak commuting to a central business district, has slipped from a 2019 share of 250 / 600 × 100 = 41.7 per cent to a 2024 share of 205 / 502.5 × 100 = 40.8 per cent. Ferry travel, which serves a more discretionary and leisure-oriented market, has risen from 15 / 600 × 100 = 2.5 per cent to 14.5 / 502.5 × 100 = 2.9 per cent, and light rail has similarly gained share. This mirrors the national and state pattern, in which rail has lagged while bus and shorter-distance modes have recovered more strongly, and in which weekend and off-peak travel now sits closer to baseline than the weekday peak (Transport for NSW 2023; Department of Transport and Planning 2023). The Census confirms the structural exposure: public transport is used disproportionately for journeys to work in inner-city, office-based occupations, precisely the segment most affected by hybrid work (ABS 2022).

Financial and productivity position

Lower patronage, combined with cost inflation in labour, energy and maintenance, has opened a structural funding gap. Two indicators capture it. The farebox recovery ratio, the proportion of operating cost met from passenger fares, is fare revenue divided by operating cost. It has fallen from 820 / 1,760 × 100 = 46.6 per cent in 2019 to 710 / 1,950 × 100 = 36.4 per cent in 2024. Cost per boarding, a measure of productivity, is operating cost divided by total boardings; it has risen from 1,760 / 600 = A$2.93 in 2019 to 1,950 / 502.5 = A$3.88 in 2024, an increase of 32 per cent driven by spreading a larger, largely fixed cost base over fewer trips. Table 2 summarises the position.

Table 2: Financial and productivity indicators, 2019 baseline compared with 2024

Note. Figures are illustrative and internally consistent for a hypothetical agency.

The subsidy per boarding, the net public contribution to each trip, is the gap between operating cost and fare revenue divided by boardings. It has grown from (1,760 – 820) / 600 = A$1.57 to (1,950 – 710) / 502.5 = A$2.47, a rise of 57 per cent. This trajectory is not sustainable indefinitely on current settings, yet the conventional response of cutting service to reduce cost is self-defeating, as later sections explain. Benchmarking against national statistics confirms that the MTA’s farebox recovery, while reduced, remains within the range observed for comparable Australian metropolitan networks, where recovery ratios have long sat below cost recovery and have deteriorated further since 2020 (BITRE 2022).

Drivers of Patronage Recovery

Rebuilding patronage requires an understanding of what actually drives a person to choose public transport for a given trip. Figure 1 presents a driver model that organises the analysis. Three sets of factors shape patronage. Demand context covers the underlying volume and pattern of trips, set by employment location, land use and the prevalence of hybrid work, and is largely outside the agency’s short-term control (ABS 2024). Service quality covers frequency, reliability, span of hours, crowding and the customer experience, all of which the agency controls directly and which the literature identifies as the strongest levers of satisfaction and loyalty (van Lierop, Badami and El-Geneidy 2018). Fares and access cover price, ticketing simplicity and the ease of reaching a stop or station. These drivers converge on patronage recovery, which in turn determines farebox recovery and the wider network benefits, including reduced road congestion, emissions and transport disadvantage, that justify public investment (Infrastructure Australia 2021).

The model clarifies where effort should be directed. Because demand context has moved structurally against the traditional peak commute, a strategy that simply waits for the pre-pandemic pattern to return will fail. The agency’s influence lies in service quality and in fares and access, and the recovery to date shows these matter: the modes and time periods offering frequent, simple and affordable travel, such as off-peak bus and ferry, have recovered fastest, while the peak-oriented rail product tied to office attendance has lagged. The strategic task is therefore to reshape the service and fare offer around the trips that are growing rather than the trips that have gone.

Intervention Options

Table 3 appraises six interventions, each expressed by its annual cost and its expected effect on patronage over the recovery period. The initiatives are chosen to act on the two controllable drivers in Figure 1, service quality and fares and access, and to target the off-peak, weekend and non-central travel that is recovering most strongly.

Table 3: Intervention appraisal, annual cost and expected patronage effect

Note. Figures are illustrative and internally consistent for a hypothetical agency.

The fare-reform effect can be worked from a constant-elasticity demand relationship, in which the change in patronage equals the fare elasticity multiplied by the proportional change in price multiplied by the affected patronage base. Meta-analysis of Australian and international evidence places the short-run fare elasticity of public transport demand at about -0.33, with off-peak travel more price-sensitive than the peak (Wardman 2014). Applying an average off-peak and weekend fare reduction of 30 per cent to an affected base of 140 million boardings gives an expected change of -0.33 × -0.30 × 140 = +13.9 million boardings, rounded to +14 million in Table 3. This is consistent with modelling that shows off-peak fare discounts spread demand more evenly and attract discretionary trips at modest net revenue cost (Infrastructure Victoria 2020).

Taken together, the six interventions are projected to add 61 million boardings per year. Measured against the 2024 residual gap of 600 – 502.5 = 97.5 million boardings, this closes 61 / 97.5 × 100 = 63 per cent of the shortfall. With modest underlying growth of about 16 million boardings from population and employment increase over the period (Infrastructure Australia 2021; ABS 2022), total patronage would approach 580 million, or roughly 96 per cent of the 2019 baseline, by 2028. The frequency and network interventions carry the largest effects because service quality compounds: more frequent, better connected services reduce waiting and interchange time, which lowers the generalised cost of travel and draws additional trips, a relationship long established in the transit economics literature (Litman 2023).

Equity and Network Effects

The strategy must be assessed for who benefits and for how the network behaves as a system, not only for aggregate patronage. On equity, the recovery has quietly changed the passenger base. As the office-based, higher-income commuters most able to work from home have partly withdrawn, the residual patronage is weighted toward people who depend on public transport because they do not have ready access to a car: lower-income households, students, younger and older people, people with disability and residents of outer suburbs with limited alternatives (Currie and Delbosc 2013). Census data confirm that car ownership and the availability of alternatives vary sharply across the metropolitan area, so a uniform service reduction would fall hardest on those with the fewest options (ABS 2022). Any move to restore farebox recovery by cutting services or raising fares across the board would therefore transfer the burden onto the most transport-disadvantaged users and deepen social exclusion, the opposite of the network’s public purpose.

On network effects, public transport derives much of its value from being a connected system rather than a collection of separate routes. Frequency, span of hours and reliable interchange generate network value: higher frequency reduces average waiting time for every passenger, a benefit that grows as more services are added, while a coherent network lets a single trip combine modes and routes (Litman 2023). This is why service reductions are dangerous. Cutting frequency to match reduced demand lengthens waits, makes journeys less reliable and pushes marginal passengers away, which lowers revenue and invites further cuts, a self-reinforcing decline widely described as the transit spiral. The corollary is that protecting and improving frequency can trigger the opposite, virtuous, cycle. The mode-share evidence in Table 1 reinforces the point: demand has shifted toward bus, light rail and orbital, non-central travel, so capacity released from over-served peak city-centre rail can be redeployed to the growing markets without necessarily increasing total service kilometres, improving both equity and efficiency at once (Infrastructure Australia 2021).

Recommendations

1. Adopt the six-part intervention program in Table 3, at A$138 million per year, as the funded patronage recovery strategy, with the explicit objective of reaching about 96 per cent of the 2019 baseline by 2028.
2. Reform fares by introducing off-peak and weekend discounts and daily and weekly caps, targeting the price-sensitive discretionary travel that the elasticity evidence shows responds most strongly, while protecting concession entitlements.
3. Reallocate service from over-supplied peak city-centre rail toward growing orbital, non-central and off-peak markets, matching the post-pandemic demand pattern rather than the pre-pandemic one.
4. Protect and lift frequency and reliability on core corridors, and resist across-the-board service cuts, so that the network moves into a virtuous cycle rather than a spiral of decline.
5. Embed equity in every decision by assessing service and fare changes for their effect on transport-disadvantaged communities, using Census and socio-economic data to monitor outcomes by area.
6. Report recovery rate, mode share, farebox recovery ratio and cost per boarding by mode each quarter against the baseline in Tables 1 and 2, benchmark against national statistics, and re-forecast the strategy annually.

Conclusion

The Metropolitan Transit Authority has recovered to 83.8 per cent of its pre-pandemic patronage, but the recovery is uneven across modes and has left a structural funding gap, with farebox recovery down to 36.4 per cent and cost per boarding up by almost a third. The evidence is clear that the traditional peak commute will not fully return, so a strategy of waiting is a strategy of managed decline. The driver model shows the agency’s real leverage lies in service quality and in fares and access, and the modes and periods that recovered fastest are those already offering frequent, simple and affordable travel. A costed program of fare reform, frequency uplift, network redesign, better information, service-quality assurance and first and last mile integration is projected to add 61 million boardings a year, close roughly two-thirds of the residual gap and, with underlying growth, restore patronage to about 96 per cent of the baseline by 2028. Delivered with attention to equity and to the network value that gives public transport its purpose, this strategy rebuilds patronage while strengthening rather than eroding the system’s contribution to the city.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2022, Census of population and housing: Method of travel to work, 2021, ABS, Canberra.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2024, Working arrangements, August 2024, ABS, Canberra.

Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) 2022, Australian infrastructure and transport statistics: Yearbook 2022, BITRE, Canberra.

Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) 2023, Urban public transport: Patronage trends and recovery after the pandemic, BITRE, Canberra.

Currie, G & Delbosc, A 2013, ‘Understanding transport disadvantage and social exclusion in Australian cities’, Transport Policy, vol. 30, pp. 191-199.

Department of Transport and Planning 2023, Victorian public transport patronage data, State Government of Victoria, Melbourne.

Infrastructure Australia 2021, 2021 Australian infrastructure plan: Reforms to sustain and grow the network, Infrastructure Australia, Sydney.

Infrastructure Victoria 2020, Fair move: Better public transport fares for Melbourne, Infrastructure Victoria, Melbourne.

International Transport Forum (ITF) 2021, The impact of COVID-19 on public transport, OECD Publishing, Paris.

Litman, T 2023, Evaluating public transit benefits and costs: Best practices guidebook, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Victoria.

Transport for NSW 2023, Train, bus, ferry, light rail and metro patronage, Transport for NSW, Sydney.

van Lierop, D, Badami, MG & El-Geneidy, AM 2018, ‘What influences satisfaction and loyalty in public transport? A review of the literature’, Transport Reviews, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 52-72.

Wardman, M 2014, ‘Price elasticities of surface public transport: A meta-analysis’, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, vol. 65, pp. 84-95.