Firstly, let me say again that the 'Worlds Most Liveable City' rankings are based on the lifestyle of executives of multi national corporations - so they don't get a hardship allowance for Vienna or Melbourne, but they do for Port Moresby!

More on topic ...
On 14/08/2018 4:14 PM, Prescott wrote:
> Melbourne peaked at about 300 million ppa during the second world war. If Sydney's system still operated today at its ww2 peak of over 400 million ppa it would have the highest tram patronage in the world, just topping Budapest and Prague. Of course back in the first half of the 20th century there were a few large systems even busier than Sydney's, but it was certainly up with the majors.

>

Melbourne actually peaked at 350 million (see attached graph) - and another remarkable factor to be noted in this graph is the relatively minor peak in heavy rail patronage.  I suspect that was related to capacity limits and perhaps also to the fact that the big munitions works - 24 hour a day operations - were served by trams. The MMTB figure also included MMTB buses and they became significant during WW2.

MMTB tram and bus patronage had declined to around 90 million by the 1980s.
Tram patronage (alone) is now back up to 200 million per annum - roughly the figure before WW2 and without a huge increase in geographic network coverage - although St Kilda, Port Melbourne, Bundoora and Wantirnas South will have had an impact.

The other major driver of 'boardings' has been free travel in the inner city.

Mal Rowe - comparing apples with pineapples