Hacker News Reader

Comment by elithrar | Hacker News Reader

> overcrowded public transport

I've always thought Australia to have pretty darned good public transport, relatively speaking. That is to say that the US has (generally) fucking terrible public transport, outside of NYC and some small commuter services.

View on HN

Public transport is fine in Melbourne except for certain routes in the middle of peak hour. Living one of the slightly less busy rail lines and generally shifting my hours an hour or 2 later in the day from peak times I find it great.

Recently had my first trip to the US. Used lots of public transport in SF and Sacramento. It was really easy and efficient (with the exception of a aggressive and dodgy Sacramento taxi experience). We were impressed. Trains, taxi, ferry, tram, bus. Planes though... Wow we're not all crimals or terrorists.

SF is unusual in its love for public transport (cablecars! trains! trams! buses! trambuses! bustrams!), I don't know about Sacramento. But SF certainly isn't normal for PT in the US.

Sydney apparently has good public transport (I found it fine on holidays), and Melbourne's trams aren't bad, but Adelaide is terrible and none of the cities compare to European cities in terms of reliability, coverage or frequency in my experience.

Sydney's public transport isn't great. Usually dirty, and frequently late. However it is a lot better then it was 1 year ago. I take the train every day and rarely get a seat or clean carriage.

If it was cheaper I wouldn't mind, but $50 a week to stand in a non air-conditioned/non-heated dirty train isn't what I consider a good deal.

Adelaide is bad, but it is the cheapest as well. Each ticket lasts for 2 hours, on trains, trams or buses. The problem with Adelaide is that it is too spread out, as soon as you leave the 1 mile city center, you hit the suburbs with houses with front and back gardens, all low density housing. It will never be good.

Sydney public transport sucks, it is very expensive, each ticket counts for only one trip. The trains are ok, the buses are very bad. The roads are awful in Sydney, and too much congestion. The state governments response to this is to build more roads, because they are too scared to make proper decisions.

Melbourne has the best public transport, but as with all Australian cities, it is too spread out (not as bad as Adelaide).

I never run into problems up in Brisbane . .

Reply on news.ycombinator.com