No other line had more full trains in that survey. But crush loads are measured two ways – the number of full trains and the percentage of passengers on the line who travel on those jammed services. By the second measure, Werribee line passengers are Melbourne's most crush loaded, with about 35 per cent of people who use it each day catching a full train, even though the line had fewer full trains than Dandenong, with 10. Dandenong, by comparison, had 28 per cent of morning peak passengers on full trains and 23 per cent in the evening. According to Victorian government standards, a six-carriage train is considered full if more than 798 passengers are aboard. Overall, crush loading has reduced in Melbourne to its lowest in at least five years. The Hurstbridge and South Morang lines experienced a huge drop in crush loads at the last survey, in which 11 per cent of morning peak trains and 7.5 per cent of evening peak trains were full overall, down from 16 per cent and 8 per cent respectively in October 2011. There are also those within the rail industry who believe crowded trains are a good thing because they generate more revenue. The challenge is to get passengers to accept a little bit of overcrowding by making the journey more pleasant.

A 2011 study by the Queensland-based Co-operative Centre for Rail Innovation found that "optimising" the number of passengers on trains contributed to a "triple bottom-line value" for society through "efficient services for customers, return on investment for providers and increased usage of a form of transport with relatively low carbon emissions". It listed several factors that make train crush loading less unpleasant. These included secure and clean handholds, pleasant fellow-passenger behaviour, effective air-conditioning, a quiet carriage and even music devices. Feelings of crowdedness are exacerbated by factors including "poor ventilation, unpleasant odours, behaviour of fellow passengers and delayed trains", it found. The study also found some types of passengers are more tolerant of crowding than others, including adults aged 18 to 24, travellers who experience it every day, and travellers from countries other than Australia. Australian passengers will easily tolerate up to four people standing in a square metre, but anything more than that creates a sense of being crowded, it found.

However, Tony Morton, the president of the Public Transport Users Association, argued it should not be necessary to load passengers onto already full trains to run a more financially viable service. "Patronage is reasonably predictable," Dr Morton said. "You know that everyone is going to go to work in the morning and there'll be certain numbers on each line and if you're running this in a competent way you'll know how many trains you need to reduce your chance of exceeding 798 on any particular train." Melbourne's trains suffered crush loads because the city's rail network had been allowed to decline for decades, he said. "We would not have an overcrowding problem in peak hour if we had a public transport system that was actually well looked after and was operated according to world's best practice," Dr Morton said. "Now it's not, because we spent decades neglecting it and the system needs work to bring it up to the standard that we see in other cities. At that standard there should be no problem carrying the number of passengers we have now in the system without suffering this kind of overcrowding."