Depicted in the line graph are the remarkable shifts in the average number of trips per person on public transportation in four Australian cities, namely Sydney, Adelaide, Hobart, and Canberra, over a 110-year period since 1900.
Overall, most cities experienced a downward trend in the number of trips per person on public transport over the time span, except for Canberra. Additionally, the figure for journeys on public transportation in Sydney retained its dominant position despite a significant decline.
Beginning at approximately 230 trips in 1900, the number of travels by public transport in Sydney doubled to 460 over the next two decades, followed by a fluctuation between roughly 325 and 460 journeys. After that, this figure experienced a dramatic plummet from 455 trips per person to around 140 trips. In contrast, people in Canberra did not use public transport between 1900 and 1920. There was a significant increase to 200 in the frequency of journeys on public transportation in Canberra in 1950. This was followed by a notable fluctuation from 50 to 200 at the end of the period, before ending at 75, securing its second position.
Turning to the categories of Hobart and Adelaide, there was an upswing in these figures. Hobart’s public transport usage reached its peak at 420 by 1950, while the figure for Adelaide followed a more dramatic upward trajectory from 150 to more than 300 in 1950. After that, both figures plummeted dramatically to roughly 50 trips per person in 2010; however, the figure for Adelaide was higher than the Hobart one, even though the gap was minuscule.