Melbourne Airport to Station Pier: Drive Yourself or Take the Taxi?

The airport’s own page lists Avis, Budget, Europcar, Hertz, Redspot and Sixt, with counters on the ground floor of the T123 car park opposite Terminal 2. It adds that most operate during flight hours — so confirm with your provider, and prints no counter hours or phone numbers.

Sixt lists 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM daily with 24-hour returns, and Avis lists 5:00 AM to midnight with an after-hours drop box. Those are the only two sets of hours we could read — we found none for Hertz, Europcar, Budget or Redspot at this airport.

The hub page has the hours checker and the city branches. The airport counters keep flight hours, not office hours, which is why they matter on a late arrival.

The airport says a new T123 Transport Hub opens off the Tullamarine Freeway at Exit 19 on Oct 6, 2026, and the old forecourt becomes the spot for SkyBus, taxis and rideshare.

Taxi ranks sit at Terminals 1, 2 and 4, and the airport calls the ride to the city about a 30-minute fare. Rideshare pick-ups use designated zones. The airport prints an A$4.48 per-trip rideshare charge that may be passed on to you, though that page may predate the Oct 6 changes.

We read the airport’s announcement and not the new signage — so follow the airport’s own signs on the day. The rental counters stay in the T123 car park, as that page prints them.

If a friend is collecting you, ask which zone they should use before you land, not after.

Our routing from a point near the airport to Station Pier gives 17.6 miles (28.3 km), about 34 minutes with no traffic. A second routing, with a different start point, gave 16.4 miles (26.4 km) and 29 minutes, and our hotel pages, measured from the terminals’ pin, print 16.5 miles (26.5 km) and 27 minutes.

Neither knows about the Tullamarine Freeway at 8:00 AM or a closed lane — so treat 29 to 34 minutes as a floor, then add the queue at the counter.

Avalon Airport’s page lists Budget, Avis, Hertz, Europcar, Sixt, Turnbull’s Hire and Kangaroo Rentals, and warns that rental staff are present only when a booking has been made online and the counters are not manned all the time. Avalon is about 34.9 miles (56.2 km) from the pier, roughly 50 minutes by our routing. SkyBus’s Avalon service to Southern Cross starts at about A$25 for an adult single, and we found no journey time.

You’d also be driving in Victorian traffic from a car park you don’t know, in a car you met an hour ago. The decision page has the hook-turn and tram rules, and we won’t repeat them.

Avis and Sixt both print an A$3.30 service fee for each day you use a toll road, on top of the tolls themselves — Avis says Linkt bills it to the card on the rental.

Hertz’s undated charges PDF lists a toll administration fee of A$38.50, which reads like a fee on a charge or claim, not a daily pass — so we don’t treat it as Hertz’s standard.

Linkt’s Visitor’s Pass opens for about A$3.50 online and covers up to 30 days on Melbourne’s toll roads, but we found nothing on whether it suits a rental car.

Linkt’s dated price notice and its current pay-for-tolls page print different CityLink and West Gate Tunnel amounts, and the newer notice wasn’t found — so we print no toll dollar figure. We couldn’t read EastLink’s dollar rates or a current West Gate Tunnel per-trip price, and we didn’t verify which toll roads the airport-to-pier route uses.

So the toll bill is the one number we can’t give you — all we have is a fee, not a rate. Ask the desk three things in writing: which toll roads the car’s account covers, what the daily fee is, and how it reaches your card.

Most sat-navs can avoid toll roads. Ask the desk whether to turn that setting on for the trip to the pier, because we couldn’t verify which toll roads the route uses.

The A$90 base rate is a placeholder, not a quote. We found no Melbourne rental price — so type yours into the first box.

With that placeholder, one day of rental comes to A$90 before fuel, tolls and parking. The taxi at the day maximum is about A$63 (about US$44), our arithmetic on the 28.3 km routing — the 26.4 km routing comes to about A$59.

The gap is about A$27 before the car has bought fuel or paid a toll — and the car still has to be returned. Two of you split the cab to about A$32 each.

The Essential Services Commission’s maximum metro fares, effective Sept 23, 2025, are A$5.25 flagfall and A$2.037 a kilometre by day (9 am to 5 pm), A$6.55 and A$2.265 overnight (5 pm to 9 am) and A$7.80 and A$2.493 on Friday and Saturday from 10 pm to 4 am — tolls, airport fees and levies pass through.

Safe Transport Victoria’s fares page, indexed from July 1, 2026, gives a flagfall range of A$5.40 to A$8.00 and A$2.10 to A$2.55 a kilometre for the same structure, plus an A$1.25 levy on every trip. The two pages differ, and we couldn’t tell which is current — so we show both.

A real fare can come in under the maximum — or pick up tolls, the airport rank fee and waiting time, none of which our arithmetic includes.

SkyBus’s Melbourne City Express costs A$25.90 one way or A$43.40 return for an adult, A$6.60 one way for a child 4 to 16 — buses run every 10 minutes, and SkyBus lists 4:00 am to 1:00 am while the airport says 24/7. It runs to Southern Cross Station, not Station Pier, and we found no SkyBus service to the pier — ports.vic.gov.au says the same.

Ask the company four things before you pay: does the quote include GST, what does it add for toll roads, where can the car go back, and is a US licence enough?

We read no brand’s answers — a gap, not a no. Our Discover Cars review covers how that site handles deposits and coverage, and the one-way page explains why a different drop-off costs more.

Return the car before you board, not after. The hub page says what we found on parking at the pier.