Love it or hate it, the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix is an event that has more implications for public transport than almost any other in Victoria. Now that it is over for 2025, I am going to talk about how it worked, what went well and what I think needs to improve.

Overall the organisers did an excellent job. It is never easy to plan and execute transport for any major event, and I think this worked more smoothly than almost any other that I’ve seen in Melbourne.

The event

The Australian Grand Prix has been held at Albert Park in Melbourne since 1996. It now goes over four days from Thursday to the main race on Sunday.

Notwithstanding the ongoing disputes over its attendance figures, there are tens of thousands of people who need to get to and from the venue every day. This is not only spectators but also staff and VIPs.

As I’ve talked about before, getting people to and from major events cannot be done efficiently or effectively if you rely on private cars; the physical geometry just does not add up. And the Grand Prix is no exception. This is why there needs to be preparation and planning to get this done.

Coming back to the Grand Prix, Albert Park is in a tricky spot. Compared to the MCG, Melbourne Park and many other major venues, the park is not already located next to high-capacity public transport like a railway. While it is directly serviced by two tram lines (12 and 96) and indirectly by several others, these do not offer enough capacity with regular timetables. Of course what is today the route 96 was formerly a heavy rail line to St Kilda. This would have been pretty handy today but it closed in 1987 and was converted to light rail – just eight years before Melbourne started hosting the Grand Prix.

The other difficulty with Albert Park’s geography is its size. While technically both tram lines touch the Park’s boundaries they each service a different side. This means that no single line services all gates for the Grand Prix.

The setup

Operations

The fundamentals of the operational changes have remained the more or less same for several years with only minor tweaks. See for example this map showing the 2023 public transport for the Grand Prix and it is very similar to 2025.

The biggest change that I noticed this year is that trams were being dispatched ‘manually’ by an army of on-ground Yarra Trams staff at Federation Square and Southern Cross Station. This is rare in Melbourne, even at major events.

The way this worked was that the platform at the Southern Cross tram stop had staff members lined up on the yellow line exactly aligned with the doors of E class trams when they stopped. This allowed the staff to control the flow of passengers, ensure that people moved well into the tram (so not to block the doorways) and keep an eye on any potential crowd crush conditions.

When they assessed their door to be full, they raised their arms in a cross to indicate this to the supervisor. When all door staff had their arms crossed the tram would close its doors, the supervisor would blow a whistle and the tram would depart.

This practice of dispatching trams with whistles is not something that I have seen before and seemed very effective (which is probably why they have been used for hundreds of years for trains!).

At this point I also noticed that unlike major events in the past, Yarra Trams staff were dispatching trams before they were at crush load capacity. People would still be standing but it was far from overcrowded. This would have made it a much more pleasant experience for people and is a much better idea for everyone concerned.

This was only possible because both shuttle routes were saturated with trams. The platforms never became too crowded and wait times were short. It’s a great example of the capacity vs. frequency question for public transport in general where you have to balance these two competing factors. Providing higher capacity vehicles is important but can’t be substituted for frequency.

Finally I have to mention the impact that this has on the rest of the public transport network. Being able to service a major event in this way requires a lot of trams. In fact I would say that the Grand Prix has a larger impact on the tram network than any other except New Year’s Eve.

This is mainly due to two things: having enough trams and drivers to run the extra services and having enough track / infrastructure capacity. You can only run a certain number of vehicles before they start to back up at traffic lights, junctions or stops. So in order to free up this part of the network for the extra Grand Prix services, regular trams were largely moved away from the tracks needed for the shuttles. The full list of disruptions to regular services is very long so I won’t go into all the details. If you do want to see this you can view this page from PTV.

In summary almost every single tram route in Melbourne saw some kind of disruption – everything from complete replacement by buses (like the 82) or a shortening of the full route (like the 48). The only ones that escaped were the 11, 19, 57, 59, 70, 75 and 78.

Information and wayfinding

The overall information and wayfinding before and during the event was very good.

The special tram stops where shuttles departed at Federation Square and Southern Cross Station had clearly been thought through. Southern Cross Station at Collins Street in particular ran as a well-oiled machine as I described above.

A lot of thought had clearly gone into the on-ground wayfinding, information and passenger experience, informed by years of practice. Key components included:

• Audio announcements: special temporary speakers were installed across both platforms that were clear and loud (but not too loud). The announcements were simple, concise, useful and easy to understand. I must give special praise to the person making the announcements as she was excellent for all the reasons above, and miles ahead of the infamously superfluous and incomprehensible Metro Trains “updates from the Network Control Centre”.

• On-ground staff: as I have repeated many times it is vital to have people ‘on the ground’ with any planned or unplanned disruptions. These were deployed by Yarra Trams in spades across the relevant tram stops in the city. At Southern Cross alone I counted at least 30 people.

• Clear vehicle destination displays: some other operators (that shall remain nameless) put little to no effort making sure that vehicles are displaying destination / service information during disruptions or special events. Not so here. Every single tram that I saw had working destination displays that were correct and up-to-date with whatever special text was required. Not only did they say “Grand Prix” as their primary text but they also listed specific gates to give people the required assurance that they were on the right tram.

• Creating enough space for circulation: among the nightmare scenarios for major events is a crowd crush. These can happen very quickly with no notice and kill or injure many people. Given the relatively narrow platforms of the tram stops, the sections of Spencer Street and Flinders Street next to the tram stops were closed to traffic and opened for people walking. Temporary fences created a deliberately long walkway to access the tram stop itself, spreading people out over a much wider area to avoid potential overcrowding if needed.

As always there are things that need to be fixed.

The most important but also easiest to resolve is the online and digital information.

For some reason there are multiple pages across several authorities and organisations for transport during the Grand Prix. Those that I have been able to find are:

PTV

• PTV landing page: linked from the homepage of ptv.vic.gov.au and contains a short summary of public transport information with an embedded journey planner form.
• PTV ‘Getting to the Grand Prix’ page: another landing page with more detailed information for each mode of public transport in Victoria. But this excludes certain details, like Traveller’s Aid information, that is included on the previous landing page and other places.
• PTV ‘Information for interstate and overseas visitors’ page: has three sections on how to travel from Melbourne Airport, how to use a myki and Traveller’s Aid.
• PTV ‘Network disruptions during the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix 2025’ page: at a staggering 1,714 words, this is a huge list in pure text of every disruption for any mode that affects the CBD or area around Albert Park.

Transport Victoria

• Transport Victoria ‘2025 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix’ page: (archive) This is also the only State Government webpage that has a map, but it is completely different to the official PTV and Yarra Trams maps. It appears to be a screenshot from an event planning document because you can see a cursor on the screen and the Microsoft Word misspelling red line alert underneath ‘Aughtie’ in the top left.

Yarra Trams

• Yarra Trams ‘Getting to the Grand Prix’ page: a much better page than any of the PTV or DTP websites. Not only have they organised the text in an easier format but it includes a map, PDF brochure and a link to track tram replacement buses.

Australian Grand Prix

• Australian Grand Prix ‘Getting Here’ page: this is the only website that tries to cover all transport modes. While it is well laid out and fairly easy to understand, the main image on the page is a pixelated table trying to explain tram routes to access gates. It also includes information on cycling, walking and other transport modes not covered by PTV or DTP. Unfortunately its link to the PTV website is incorrect – it directs people to ‘https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/grandprix’ but this yields a 404 error when used. Unfortunately this page misses regular metropolitan bus services but this is relatively minor.

Not only is having seven separate pages incredibly confusing but the information is split across multiple places – i.e. there is no single source of truth. I don’t expect Yarra Trams to have all information on their own website because they only operate trams but it is a sign of fragmentation when there are different maps and information even with the same Department (DTP).

Bizarrely there are also no maps or any other visual content on the PTV website. I have no idea why this has happened because there was plenty of on-ground official PTV maps and the Yarra Trams website also displays it.

The PTV pages are almost entirely just walls of text which are incredibly difficult to read and navigate. Some, like the disruptions page, are thousands of words.

The future

The opening of Anzac Station as part of the Metro Tunnel later this year will make the 2026 public transport arrangements very interesting. Together with the new operators of Yarra Trams, I think that we will see significant changes in 2026. It’s likely that the number of trams required will be reduced as the current Swanston Street shuttles may be replaced with trams operating just between Anzac Station and the northern gates. Hopefully this means that there are fewer impacts to the rest of the network.

Hopefully there is more rolling stock available in general as G class trams start to come online. With so many special event services needed throughout the year it would make sense to build up some residual capacity in the fleet. This would allow PTV to run these services without kneecapping 80% of the tram network.

The Grand Prix is with us until at least 2035 so it remains to be seen what the arrangements are well into the future.