# Sydney to Melbourne.. most travelled route in the world? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 1, 2002, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822 "2002-11-01T09:11:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lou\_E.Thunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ebca7d/32.png) [@Lou\_E.Thunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lou_E.Thunder)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/1 "2002-11-01T09:11:34Z")
A friend at school said that they heard that the travel from Sydney to Melbourne (and/or Melbourne to Sydney) is the most travelled ruote (sorry, i cant think of a better word) in the world. Now with Australis 20 Million people… this CANT be possible… can it? Perhaps someone has a little fact like “Over 30 Million people travel from City x to City y each year”?? I just need something to say that he is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Hemlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/2 "2002-11-01T11:26:26Z")
Most traveled route in Oz - that I can believe. Is this by air, road, rail? What about New York to New Jersey? I just punched “world’s busiest route” into Google and got Tokyo-Hokaido (by air) and something called the 401 Freeway in Toronto (road, presumably). ---
**Author:** ![Hemlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/3 "2002-11-01T11:28:33Z")
And then I hit “submit reply” by mistake. And then I got something about the English Channel (world’s busiest sea lane). Etc, etc. I would ask your friend to furnish the proof. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/4 "2002-11-01T11:31:23Z")
Are we talking airline traffic, or all traffic? So far as passenger air traffic goes, I have heard (but I have no cite) that the busiest routes are, in order, Tokyo-Sapporo London-Paris Sydney-Melbourne London-Dublin This site [http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/story\_air180800.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/story_air180800.shtml) gives volume on the Sydney-Melbourne route as “over five million” passengers per year. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/5 "2002-11-01T13:51:18Z")
No data. But I’d be surprised if New York City to Washington, DC wasn’t on there. There’s a godawful number of air and rail shuttles every single day and tremendous traffic on I-95. ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/6 "2002-11-01T14:28:44Z")
I remember SYD - MEL being the world’s busiest air corridor was one of those citeless factoids floating around my brain since high school. Just a couple of weeks ago I saw some figures somewhere (I forgot where) which put it in third place, which backs up what **UDS** said. Australia does have a small popupation (a little more than Texas), but that population is disproportionately loaded into two large cities 600 miles from each other. They are six hundred tough miles behind the wheel, the trains are slow and expensive, and the buses slow and uncomfortable. Also, Sydney is a bigger market than Melboune, yet Melbourne is HQ to a lot of Australia’s leading companies, so there are lots of business commuters. This all leads to high numbers of air passengers. Also, quite a few international flights do the Sydney - Melbourne (or vice versa) leg as well (BA and Qantas flights to London typically do this). ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/7 "2002-11-01T20:17:00Z")
Highway 401 in Toronto is frequently reported [locally] as North America’s busiest highway, but I don’t remember hearing it being the busiest in the world. How many flights are there a day between Sydney and Melborne? Air Canada _alone_ has 10 flights a day (Airbus A319’s and A320’s) to La Guardia airport in New York from Toronto, and I’m sure there are American cities that are better served even than that. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/8 "2002-11-01T21:08:16Z")
New-York-to-London has got to be up there in the list of “busiest routes”… ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/9 "2002-11-01T21:11:23Z")
From [Virgin Blue](http://www.virgin.com/news/docs/blue_13.shtml) > [@](#): > > Launch of fights every half hour between Sydney and Melbourne during peak business travel periods and hourly flights throughout the rest of the day. With 18 flights a day, Virgin Blue is able to address the needs of its thousands of weekly business flyers on Australia’s most critical business corridor A timetable search of the [Qantas](http://www.qantas.com.au/flightinfo/dyn/ScheduleResponse) site for Monday 6 November revealed forty flights SYD - MEL. I didn’t check the number of return flights, but assume it is similar. They are leaving Sydney every fifteen minutes during peak times. So that gives us 58 flights a day for the two domestic carriers - I think they both operate 737s (some Qantas flights may be 747s on part of international routes). There are also some foreign carriers such as Cathay Pacific operating 747s on this route. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2002, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sydney-to-melbourne-most-travelled-route-in-the-world/134822/10 "2002-11-01T22:47:49Z")
Hourly shuttles are operated between NY-Boston, NY-DC, and SF-LA. At least they were a short while ago, don’t know if the dotcom bust has affected some of those schedules.