Patronage

Ferry patronage has declined steadily since 2000/01 when it reached a peak of 469,000 fare-paying boardings and 558,000 total boardings. By the end of 2004/05, fare-paying boardings had fallen to 369,000 and total boardings to 460,000. This is largely attributable to declining tourism.

On a per kilometre basis, fare-paying boardings fell by 0.5 per cent from 10.520 in 2003/04 to 10.470 in 2004/05, and total boardings fell 0.7 per cent from 13.146 to 13.057. In 2000/01, fare-paying boardings per service kilometre were 13.303 and total boardings per service kilometre were 15.824 boardings.

Customer Satisfaction

The Passenger Satisfaction Monitor 2005 continued the trend of a very high proportion of passengers consistently expressing satisfaction with Transperth’s ferry service overall.

Satisfaction ratings for key service characteristics of Transperth’s ferry service (other than passenger safety) are shown below:

Passenger Safety

The graph below shows the proportion of respondents who “always or usually feel safe” at the specified times/locations. The responses were to the following prompt in the Transperth Passenger Satisfaction Monitor: “How safe do you generally feel from personal interference or threat from other passengers?”

The results for the past five years show that almost all ferry passengers generally felt safe on the ferry and at jetties during daytime.While the proportion of users who generally felt safe at night both on board and at jetties remained high, there was a marked decline in 2004. This was reversed in 2005.