Canberra’s Light Rail has proved much more popular than expected, with more than 15,000 boardings made every day on light rail which is ahead of what was expected in 2021, said Minister for Transport, Chris Steel. In fact, by the end of December 2019 Light Rail had already carried 3,213,126 passengers (source).
Today, Thursday 6 February, Minister for Transport Chris Steel MLA announced more light rail services during morning and afternoon peaks to meet demand, with further extensions to come. Additional services have begun this week:
- a half hour extension of the southbound morning peak services (every 6-minutes) from 7am – 9.30am (previously 7am – 9am); and
- afternoon peak services (every 6-minutes) have been extended from from 3pm – 6.30pm (northbound)(previously 4pm – 6pm) and from 3.30pm to 6pm (southbound) (previously 4pm – 5.30pm)
You can see the updated Frequency Guide here.
From term 2, further changes for light rail services will commence:
- frequency will be increased to every 5-minutes during the morning weekday peak;
- the afternoon weekday peak period (every 6 minutes) will be extended to 7pm northbound and 6.30pm southbound; and
- services will commence earlier on Sundays and public holidays from 7am (rather than 8 am).
With the expansion of peak periods and the move to a 5-minute timetable during morning peaks, a further 155 light rail services will be added every week, taking the total number of light rail services to more than 1600 every week.
These services will be delivered using the existing fleet of 14 light rail vehicles.