Wednesday 25 January, 2012

In the most comprehensive survey ever done about V/Line more than 11,000 people across regional Victoria have given their reasons for using public transport.

Minister for Public Transport Terry Mulder said passengers were surveyed about their reasons for travel to help V/Line and the government with future transport planning.

"We already knew the busiest times of travel for V/Line are generally during the morning and afternoon peak periods for work," he said.

"However we wanted to know more about what the other reasons were for people to use public transport. Some of the results were surprising and certainly not consistent across the state."

Based on the survey results, during 2010-11 Ballarat line customers travelling to Melbourne are predominately made-up of:

• People travelling for work with 1.08 million trips, or 43% of all reasons for travel with V/Line;
• After work education in Melbourne is the second most common reason for people to travel to Melbourne on the train with 375,988 trips (15%);
• Visiting friends and family was the third most popular reason with 12% (306,595 trips);
• And Ballarat line people are Victoria’s biggest travellers for sport with 130,312 trips (or 5%) made to football, cricket and other sporting events.

V/Line Chief Executive Officer Rob Barnett said planning for where future patronage growth was likely to occur would become critical in the future.

"No two parts of the state are the same and people are travelling for different reasons. What was interesting was the number of Melburnians using V/Line to travel for high quality cultural events and attractions in regional Victoria.

"This is an untapped market we are going to target to help lift regional tourism and country Victoria.

"This is particularly important after the survey revealed despite Ballarat having high quality tourist attractions like Sovereign Hill, just 11% or 10,722 trips were made to the city by Melburnian based tourists."

In other results the survey revealed:

• Visting friends and family is the biggest reason Melburnians use V/Line to travel to Ballarat (39% or 142,430 trips) followed by:
• Work with a surprising 28% or 100,134 trips made by Melburnians to Melton and Ballarat;
• The Ballarat line is second only to Geelong in the total number of Melburnians travelling out to the region with a total 361,450 trips made in 2010-11.

Towns and cities with regional university campuses all benefited from strong travel from Melburnians for study.

The University of Ballarat and Australian Catholic University is likely to be responsible for 31,454 trips (or 11%) of all reasons for Melburnians to travel to Ballarat.