Finding how crowded a given train connections is (by day of week, and by hour)
I will need to travel on an OEBB Railjet train, between Vienna and Graz, a service that runs once per hour. As I will be able to travel at any point during the day, I wonder if there is any way to get any data indicative of which trains (throughout a given day of the week) are normally the least busy, based on past travel statistics aggregated through various means.
Google Maps sometimes shows how busy a given tram/bus is - but that information is only given live as opposed to aggregated by time of the day and day of the week (as is the case with its Popular Times graphs for businesses); it's also only available for local public transport rather than for trains. OEBB's own Scotty app provides lots of information about train connections, but there too I've not been able to find this particular information regarding the crowding levels of trains.
Best Answer
You can get a rough estimate by looking at the ticket prices a week or two in advance. The departures with the cheapest tickets will likely be least crowded. If I for example check the coming Monday (October 26th), there are for most departures saver fares available ranging from €24.90 to €39.90. For one departure, no saver fares are available, but you need a full price ticket for €41.00.
The departures with tickets for €24.90 at 5:58, 20:58 and 21:58 will likely have the least number of passengers. The departures with only full price tickets for €41.00 at 18:58 will likely have the most.
BTW, the service runs every hour and not only every 2 hours.
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More answers regarding finding how crowded a given train connections is (by day of week, and by hour)
Answer 2
ÖBB Auslastungsanzeige https://live.oebb.at is intended for this, but not all trains are covered.
This is what the crowding display looks like, if available:
Answer 3
So far, for what it's worth, my own preferred method is to look at the seat reservation schemes for a given train, and infer that it's representative of the day of the week and time. For instance, if I want to compare the business level of Sunday trains, I will look at these seat schemes for several trains on the upcoming Sunday. To compare across days of the week, one needs of course to look with an equal amount of days in advance for each 'candidate'.
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