Light rail is the single most popular public transport route in Canberra, taking more than 20 per cent of all passenger boardings in three months to December.
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The service, which connects Gungahlin to the city centre, recorded 892,501 user trips in the December 2022 quarter, among the 4.2 million boardings across Canberra's public transport network.
The next best performing service - route R4 - handled 11.8 per cent of boardings in the same period.
The network's nine rapid bus routes handled just under 40 per cent of passenger boardings in the quarter.
The R4 travels in both directions between the Belconnen and Tuggeranong interchanges, through the city and Woden.
Light rail has handled at least 20 per cent of the network's boardings for at least three quarters.
New data has also revealed the steep drop-off in passenger numbers for evening public transport services after 9pm.
Weekday boardings peak in the morning in the hour from 8am, when an average of 9186 passengers catch buses or light rail.
The weekday evening peak is spread over a longer period of time, but the busiest hour is from 5pm, when an average of 6213 passengers get on board.
In the hour from 10pm, an average of 617 passengers get on board, while 147 passengers on average board buses and light rail after 11pm.
Less than 14 per cent of trips on the public transport network were made at the weekend.
Transport Minister Chris Steel has previously cited very low late-night patronage as a justification for cuts to evening services in a timetable that began on January 30.
About 90 per cent of weekday boardings on the bus network are recorded between 7am and 7pm, Mr Steel said in February.
Mr Steel said 0.2 per cent of bus boardings on weekdays were made after 11pm, which he said was one in every 500 boardings.
"All changes to the bus network were based on data-informed decisions, with the Transport Canberra bus scheduling team heavily scrutinising network patronage data," he said at the time.
Passengers travelling on Transport Canberra bus services in the first three months of 2023 spent an average of 23 minutes on board.
The average length in time of a bus route in Canberra is 43 minutes.
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Buses travelled nearly 6.1 million kilometres in 2021-22 with no passengers, a practice known as "dead running", when buses need to return to depots or reach route starting points.
The ACT government provided the information in answers to questions on notice from the Greens' Jo Clay in the Legislative Assembly.
Ms Clay said the results showed light rail was the big success story of the public transport system.
"We need to roll out light rail faster on all of the other stages, and we need more buses and more drivers and a more frequent bus service that connects in with it," she said.
Ms Clay said the changes to the bus timetable this year did not help attract passengers to the system.
Bus service reliability was above 99 per cent across weekday and weekend bus services in the three months to December 2022, despite falling slightly short of the 99.5 per cent target.
Light rail services were 99.9 per cent reliable in the same period, the government said.
The data revealed 16.5 per cent of passengers in the December quarter travelled on concession tickets, while just under a third of passengers were either tertiary or school students.
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Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
