400 Dethroned, Sydney’s New Busiest Bus Route Revealed

Sydney has a new busiest bus route after the previous holder of the title, Route 400 between Bondi Junction and Burwood via Sydney Airport was truncated to operate solely between Bondi Junction and Sydney Airport last September.

Route 333 between North Bondi and Circular Quay via Bondi Beach, Bondi Junction and Oxford Street is Sydney’s new busiest bus route. This comes after the service was rebranded Bondi Link and had a major frequency increase to coincide with the introduction of a dedicated bendy bus fleet last year. This route is popular with tourists travelling to Bondi Beach and commuters along the densely populated Oxford Street and Bondi Road corridors.

The ability of the 333 to leapfrog up the list form 7th to 1st in just a year is largely attributed to a large frequency increase and the truncation of duplicating bus services such as the 380, which was truncated to operate between Watsons Bay and Bondi Junction rather than all the way to Circular Quay.

B-Line route B1 between Mona Vale and Wynyard has also proved to be highly popular, now the second busiest route in the Sydney bus network after launching just under 2 years ago.

Rounding out the top 5 busiest routes, in third place was Route 343 between Kingsford and Chatswood, in fourth place was Route 400 between Bondi Junction and Sydney Airport and in fifth place was Route M52 between Parramatta and Circular Quay.

These new standings come from Opal data available through Open Data NSW. This data shows the struggle to attract patronage to Nightride services and services in Western Sydney, with the bottom ten services in terms of patronage all coming from those categories. It also reveals the large increase of patronage to routes in the Eastern Suburbs and Northern Beaches.