Passengers have been forced to stand for hours and many were unable to board services over Easter as Victoria’s regional train system strained under the combined weight of a long weekend, school holidays and fare-free services.

Reports of overcrowding on V/Line services escalated on Friday and Saturday as public holiday timetables reduced services, amid increased demand after the state government introducing free travel during April.

Photos supplied to Guardian Australia by a commuter at the Easter weekend showed the Bendigo train station packed with people waiting for the service to Southern Cross, and people standing throughout the train carriages. Other images circulating on social media showed similar crowd levels waiting for the outbound Bendigo services at Southern Cross on Saturday morning.

Comments posted to V/Line’s public Facebook page also claimed morning services to Swan Hill – a four- to five-hour journey – and trains making the four-hour journey to Bairnsdale were leaving Southern Cross jammed full, with people standing in the aisles.

“Sardines – can’t even breathe in there,” one commuter told Nine News on Saturday after alighting from a train.

Another said: “Surely they would predict that a lot of people would be getting on the trains. I thought they were adding more [services] but maybe they hadn’t added enough.”

These comments follow reports of regional services already struggling to accommodate extra demand since the premier, Jacinta Allan, announced on 29 March that public transport would be free throughout the state in April to help people reduce fuel usage and cope with related rising costs.

A V/Line spokesperson told Guardian Australia that extra carriages had been added to services over the long weekend and that more than 300 coaches had been on standby across the network, including to take people to weekend events including the Bendigo Easter festival.

A Victorian government spokesperson said the government and V/Line would “continue to closely monitor patronage across the network over coming weeks”.

Regular V/Line travellers have been reporting overcrowding on some services since well before the fare-free period began.

The south-western Victorian paper the Standard has reported on increased overcrowding on the Warrnambool service, including the need for coaches to accommodate overflow since V/Line switched from using N-type carriages to VLocity trains on the route in 2024. The new trains were too long for some platforms, resulting in trains running with three carriages instead of six.

The state MP for Polwarth, the Liberal party’s Richard Riordan, raised the issue of overcrowding in parliament on 4 March, saying: “On every single train service in western Victoria people are standing for two or three hours – as long as the train does not break down or come to grief along the journey, which could extend it to four or five hours standing.”

The community advocacy group the Public Transport User Association has raised concerns about the regional public transport system struggling to keep up with demand, and shared photos of people standing in the aisles on the Warrnambool train on its Facebook page on Saturday.

Government passenger data from the 2024-25 financial year shows the Geelong and Ballarat lines had the highest number of passengers, with more than 3.8 million people transiting through just three stations on the Geelong line alone.