Gold Coast light rail is seeing nearly 18,000 passenger trips a day, and recently hosted its 5-millionth passenger, just 289 days after being opened.
Australia’s newest light rail network, G:link was opened in July 2014, and is delivered by GoldLinQ, the consortium of Bombardier, Downer, Keolis, McConnell Dowell and Plenary Group, under an 18-year, $1 billion PPP.
In its first 100 days of operation, G:link hosted over 1.74 million passengers. On May 6, transport operator TransLink announced G:link had seen its 5-millionth passenger.
“Five million paid trips on the trams is a significant milestone, especially reaching this level of patronage only nine months after services started,” TransLink deputy director-general Stephen Banaghan said.
“This is almost the equivalent of every person in Queensland taking a ride on the G.”
TransLink says the passenger volumes are exceeding their expectations, with an average of more than 17,800 trips made each day.
Through eight full months of operation, the network is averaging about 540,000 trips a month.
“A comparable system at 14km is the Edinburgh light rail that counted 1.5 million passengers in its first 100 days after opening in May 2014,” Banaghan stated.
“The G: is revolutionising public transport travel on the Gold Coast and it is now the spine of TransLink’s public transport network on the Gold Coast.”
TransLink chief executive Phil Mumford was equally pleased.
“Reaching this incredible milestone in around nine months of passenger services validates the hard work that GoldLinQ consortium members have put into the project over the last few years to make it the success it is,” Mumford said.