This Just In: These Are Melbourne's Busiest Tram Routes — And the Results Are Way More Hectic Than We Imagined
Newly compiled data reveals that some routes on Melbourne's 250km of tram lines carry over a million passengers every month.
For over 140 years now, the city of Melbourne has been carting its residents from suburb to suburb on an iconic tram network. It's actually the world's largest operational tram network, with over 250km of tram routes crisscrossing the CBD and surrounding suburbs. But have you ever felt like the trams can't keep up with their passengers? In a new report published by The Age, we can now see which tram lines are the busiest of the bunch.
Studying 22 of the city's total 24 routes, The Age accessed passenger data from the Victorian Department of Transport covering the years between 2019 and mid-2025 on a month-by-month basis. Myki tap-ons are cross-referenced with Automatic Vehicle Monitoring to identify passenger counts — meaning results for the two missing routes (Routes 30 and 35) are skewed by the free tram zone.
When looking at the data set in full, by and large, passenger counts have been steadily climbing (population statistics 101), but universal dips can be seen in the COVID-19 lockdown periods, with numbers now back to pre-pandemic levels.
The crown jewel of crowded commutes is — with 200k more passengers than the next — Route 96, beginning and ending in St Kilda Beach and East Brunswick, which has recorded monthly passenger counts of a staggering million-plus every month since August 2022 — that's more than thirty thousand passengers per day. Those huge figures are likely due to the absence of train stations on the northern side, and proximity to just about everything on Bourke Street and Nicholson Street — a stretch it shares with Route 86, which peaked at just shy of a million in March 2025.
Visit Victoria
Route 109 (Box Hill to Port Melbourne) is one of the other busiest routes, with a monthly passenger count that hasn't dropped below 800,000 since September 2022. Routes 58 and 19 follow, both beginning in Coburg and passing parallel through some of the CBD's busiest spots, including The University of Melbourne, and Flagstaff and Melbourne Central stations.
In terms of the less busy, the two non-CBD routes lead…or lag, compared to others. Route 82 is a graveyard shift by comparison, shuttling around 100,000 people monthly along a short route between Footscray and Moonee Ponds. The straight shot of Route 78 is dead quiet, not leaving the 100,000–200,000 bracket since May 2019.
The Age interviewed a Department of Transport spokesperson, who said, "Patronage continues to increase, and we will monitor services and make adjustments as travel patterns evolve," suggesting timetable changes to accommodate rising passenger volumes.
While the free tram zone is a boon, it could be part of the cramming problem, so new timetables might be the best way to keep up with the ever-growing city. For now, we'll keep waiting to say goodbye to the Myki later this year.
Images: supplied/iStock
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