How many people use each railway station?

All righty gunzel stats nerds, prepare to go crazy.

These figures are not an official release, and they can’t be guaranteed to be entirely accurate. In fact the original included the specific disclaimer:

This document is supplied “as is” without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, without limitation, fitness for a particular purpose. So there. You have been warned.

That said, they are from a good source (and are probably the sort of thing that should be routinely released officially).

Each number is the estimated boardings per weekday, from the 2008-2009 financial year, so boardings are likely to have gone up since then — figures elsewhere indicate 2.7% growth in 2009-10, and an expected 8.5% in 2010-11, so about 11.4% over these figures.

The third column indicates whether the station is staffed: F=Fulltime, P=Parttime (usually “Host” peak-hour staffing for Metro stations, but staffed most days until about 8:30pm for V/Line), N=No. Any errors in this third column are mine.

Top of the list, as you’d expect, are the CBD stations.

Following those are the stations serving major suburban traffic generators such as shopping centres and universities, as well as major interchanges to bus and tram.

As we get through the list, we get to the suburban stations. Some have other connecting public transport services and traffic generators nearby, some don’t.

I was quite surprised to see how low Huntingdale is on this list, given the large numbers of students using it (who would board in the evening when coming back from Monash Uni). Perhaps the counting methodology isn’t perfect. It’s also the highest ranked station not to have fulltime staff.

Another thing that distinguishes stations is whether or not they have staff. All of the above have part-time or fulltime staff.

Some of the fulltime staffed stations have always been that way because they are needed for operational purposes. Others have been added over the years to fill the gaps between staffed stations, though some significant gaps remain. Most of the part-time (“host”) staff were allocated to stations in order of patronage in 2004.

At this point in the list we hit the first unstaffed station: East Richmond.

At around the 1000 per day mark see the first two V/Line stations listed: Sunbury and Melton. They’re on this list because they’re part of the Metcard zone system. Sunbury will become a Metro station in the next couple of years, along with Diggers Rest. Melton is proposed to go the same way, but there is no funding for it yet.

It’s perhaps notable that Aircraft, a fair way from the bottom with almost 1000 boardings per day, is proposed by some to be closed once Williams Landing station opens, though it will be over 1km away.

Officer is likely to grow in usage as housing is going in around there at present.

The bottom four are worth noting because they all get only V/Line services. The figures may seem low, but that’s because they get very few trains compared to the others, despite some being in rapidly growing suburbs.

General Motors was also on the original table, but I’ve removed it as no trains serve it and it’s been officially closed since 2002. The Stony Point stations seem to be missing off the list.

A separate figure was given for transfers (presumably between trains): 33,405.

Use your browser’s Find function (usually “Ctrl-F”) to find a particular station on the list.

• Update 8/6/2011: These figures plotted on a map
• Update July 2013: PTV has published more up to date and detailed station-by-station figures