Waterline reports on trends in throughput, container handling productivity on the waterfront and landside of ports in Australia and the cost of importing and exporting containers via 5 major container ports.

Chapter 5: Rail

 

• Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics Yearbook 2025 - Download PDF
• Rail—Yearbook 2025 (99 KB) - Download Excel file

This chapter provides information on rail expenditure, activity and network lengths.  Estimates of passenger kilometres up to 2024-25 can be found in Chapter 2 - Passengers.

• People in Melbourne use light rail more than any other city with 155 million passengers in 2023–24.
• People in Sydney use heavy rail more than any other city with 352 million passengers in 2023–24.
• In 2023-24 there were $36 billion of public rail-related expenditure.

Figure 10 shows Australia’s network of railways by gauge and Figure 11 shows rail public transport patronage by million passenger movements. This refers to all trips on suburban rail networks and is based on reporting from train operators.  Passenger movements were trending upwards in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide before starting to fall sharply in 2019–20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2023–24 patronage numbers had generally still not returned to 2018–19 levels.

Figure 10 Australia’s railways, by gauge

Source: BITRE (2025), Trainline 12

Figure 11 Public transit patronage on heavy rail, Australian capital city networks

Sources: BITRE (2015), Long-term trends in urban public transport
BITRE (2025), Trainline 12
Prior Trainline publications

Data on the latest national and state/territory road deaths and fatal crashes can be found on the National Road Safety Data Hub website.

Explore up-to-date data tracking counts of fatalities in crashes involving heavy vehicles on the National Road Safety Data Hub.

For additional freight related information select the relevant publication below. 

These fact sheets provide guidance for analysing regional data including geography, population, employment and industry.

Use the national road safety tracker dashboard to explore how Australia is tracking on national strategic targets for 2030, including the number of road deaths over the last 12 months, the rate of road deaths per 100,000 population and the number of serious injuries due to road incidents (data lags by approximately 3 years due to sources).

The Australian Air Distances directory is intended to be an adjunct to other publications in the Air Transport Statistics series where distances have been used to calculate or derive statistical information. It is updated on an irregular basis.

Information and data on domestic aviation can be found at the following links.

• Australian domestic aviation activity—monthly publications
• Australian domestic aviation activity—time series
• Australian domestic aviation activity—annual publications

Below are graphs and summary analysis relating to domestic aviation activity.      

Summary

There were 5.10 million passengers carried on Australian domestic commercial aviation (including charter operations) in June 2026 compared with 5.05 million in June 2025 (up 1.0%). This is an increase of 3.7% on pre-COVID June 2019 passenger numbers (4.92 million).

4.69 million passengers were carried on Regular Public Transport (RPT) flights in June 2026 (excluding charter operations), a decrease of 0.1% compared with June 2025.

For the month of June 2026 there were 47.6 thousand RPT aircraft trips, a decrease of 2.3% on June 2025.

For the year ending June 2026 there were 60.75 million RPT passengers, an increase of 2.2% on the year ending June 2025.

RPT revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) performed were 5.64 billion for the month, compared with 5.69 billion in June 2025 (down 0.8%).

Capacity, measured by available seat kilometres (ASKs), decreased to 6.92 billion in June 2026 compared with 7.10 billion in June 2025 (down 2.5%).

The industry-wide load factor (RPKs/ASKs) increased from 80.1% in June 2025 to 81.5% in June 2026. 

Total cargo movements at Australian airports on domestic RPT flights were 27.3 thousand tonnes in June 2026, an increase of 4.3% compared with June 2025. 

In June 2026 there were 2.08 million domestic passenger movements through regional airports, an increase of 0.1% from June 2025. 

Fixed-wing charter operators carried 409.9 thousand passengers in June 2026, an increase of 15.8% compared with June 2025.

Summary of annual RPT activity

* percentage point difference

The purpose of BITRE's domestic airfare index is to monitor changes over time in the price of Australian air travel. Fares are collected monthly for the top 70 routes in the Australian domestic network.

Domestic Discount Airfares

Click the expand button at the bottom right of the dashboard to enter full screen mode.

Cheapest available return fares from January 2010 to latest data month.

For Graphs, Summary table and Notes see further down the page. For collection methodology, see here. Collection methodology

Airfares time series from October 1992 to latest data month. 

Graphs

Domestic Airfares (Business)

Domestic Airfares (Restricted Economy)

Domestic Airfares (Best Discount)

Summary table

Real Domestic Airfare Index (July 2003 = 100)

Notes

Indexes are constructed from BITRE's monthly survey of airline internet booking sites. Fares are recorded only when they are available on the nominated day of travel (the last Thursday of the month). The series is a price index of the lowest available fare in each fare class, weighted over selected routes. It does not measure real airline yields, or average fares paid by passengers. For more information on methodology use the link at the top of this page.

Occasionally, the index may record an unusual result when the nominated day of travel falls on, or adjacent to, a public holiday:

• The travel date fell on a public holiday for April 2024, December 2024 and December 2025.
• The travel date fell the day before a public holiday for December 2020, January 2024, March 2024 and December 2025.
• The return travel date fell the day before a public holiday in March 2020 and March 2022.
• The travel date for April 2025 fell between 2 public holidays.
• The travel date for January 2025 fell after a public holiday

April 2021 to current—Best Discount index: During the period of "Half Off" air fares made available through Tourism Aviation Network Support (TANS), the BITRE Air Fares Survey has collected the cheapest available fare—using "Half Off" fares where available.

April 2021—Restricted Economy index: Virgin Australia Restricted Economy fares on some routes were noticeably lower this month. The Virgin Australia web site notes that complementary food would no longer be provided on Economy class fares as of 25 March 2021. It is not clear what part this change has played in the reductions to Virgin Australia's Restricted Economy fares.

Business class fares from April 2020: Fares collected may not include normal entitlements like meals and lounge access during the period impacted by COVID-19.

Index calculation for April 2020 to November 2020: There were significant reductions to airline services in April and May 2020 in particular due to the COVID-19 pandemic and valid fares were not available for many routes covered by the survey. The indexes for April to November 2020 are based on the available routes during those months compared to the same routes in the base period.

November 2017 change to Restricted Economy index: From November 2017, refunds of Jetstar's Restricted Economy products (Starter with Max) for cancellations are only available in the form of vouchers. Vouchers may only be redeemed for other Jetstar products and are therefore considered by BITRE to be closer to a transfer than a full refund. This change in Jetstar's product places it outside BITRE's definition of a restricted economy fare, which has resulted in a sharp increase in the restricted economy index for November 2017.

March 2015—the Full Economy index is discontinued: From the middle of February 2015, Qantas Airways ceased offering Full Economy fares for domestic travel. It is no longer possible to produce an index for this fare category. In the future, if Full Economy fares are offered on sufficient routes, the index for this fare category could be reinstated.

December 2011 and January 2012 changes to Business and Full Economy indexes: Both the Business and Full Economy indexes were substantially affected by changes to fare offered. In December 2011 the Business index fell substantially mainly due to reductions in many of these fares by Qantas. This index again dropped significantly in January 2012 as Virgin Australia introduced Business class fares on many more of their routes. With the expansion of Virgin Australia's Business class fares they removed their Premium Economy class fare completely. The removal of these fares resulted in the Full Economy index rising substantially in January 2012.

June 2011 change to Restricted Economy index: In June 2011 both Virgin Australia and Jetstar introduced simplified fare structures. The new fare types used in constructing the indexes are shown on the Methodology page. The major impact of this change was to the Restricted Economy index. The new Virgin Australia fares used for this category (Flexi) were substantially lower than the previously used Virgin fares (Flexible). In a competitive response Qantas also reduced its Flexi Saver fares on competing routes. These changes produced a sharp drop in the Restricted Economy index.

February 2008 change to Full Economy index: Prior to February 2008 the Full Economy Fare category was based solely on the Qantas Fully Flexible Fare. From February 2008 on the category was expanded to include Virgin Blue's Corporate Plus Fare, leading to a drop in the index at the point of changeover.

Consumer price index Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Catalogue No 6401.0. We acknowledge that the ABS has rebased CPI to September 2025 and this will be incorporated from the start of the 2026-27 financial year.