Passengers on Sydney’s $3 billion CBD and south-east light rail line have more than doubled in a year, a major turnaround from a nose dive in patronage during the worst of the pandemic.
After an inauspicious start in late 2019, new figures show that average daily patronage for the trams running on the line between Circular Quay and both Randwick and Kingsford totalled 86,444 tap-ons in February, up from 41,400 a day in the same month a year earlier.
Patronage on the light rail line has soared over the past year.Credit: Oscar Colman
Mathew Hounsell, a researcher at the University of Technology’s transport research centre, said the figures revealed how “massively popular” the light rail line had become because of its frequency and reliability. “If you build something that is easy to understand, convenient and reliable, people will use it,” he said.
Average daily tap-ons of Opal cards and mobile devices by commuters at stops along George Street in the CBD surged by 123 per cent to almost 46,000 in February, compared with the same month in 2022.
Stops at Circular Quay, Chinatown and Central Station are easily the busiest, each averaging well over 10,000 people a day tapping on in February.
Hounsell said patronage from 10am to 3pm on Saturdays was also higher than the same period on weekdays, while usage was strong on both Friday and Saturday evenings.
Trams began carrying passengers along George Street in December 2019, just months before the pandemic led to the…
