Monday 23 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 Warrnambool customers:
- Made 13,800 return trips to visit friends and family (23%) of all reasons for travel with V/Line;
- Similarly 13,800 trips were also made by customers travelling for leisure;
- Tourism was a strong reason for travel with 7800 return trips made (13%)
- And despite its relative long distance from Geelong and Melbourne work still rated reasonably high with 4200 trips, or 7%.
V/Line Chief Executive Officer Rob Barnett said planning for where future patronage growth was likely to occur would become critical.
"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."
In other results the survey revealed:
- Melburnians travelled to Warrnambool to visit friends and family as the number one reason with 10,200 trips (34% of all trips) followed closely by
- Tourism with 9300 trips (31%) and;
- Work with 3900 (13%).
Mr Barnett said towns and cities with regional university campuses all benefited from strong travel from Melburnians for study with 1200 student trips to Warrnambool’s Deakin University campus.