Through a mixture of necessity, hope for the future, and in some cases pure accident, Australia has ended up with more than its share of long railway platforms. The story of these platforms – when, how, and most importantly why they came to be as long as they are – is the story of rail in Australia.
I recently applied to TfNSW for the entry and exit data for the 94 stations on the regional NSW network for the five calendar years 2019-2023. The data gives us some interesting insights, including an estimate of interstate patronage by station.
Hot Rails presents the largest and most comprehensive survey ever made of rail’s market share against air travel, with 219 datapoints covering 133 unique city pairs across five continents. It shows rail can be a significant player even at longer travel times, becoming dominant for trips four hours or less.
