OZ +17 (UK -1): Bloody good idea...

I think one of the ways you can get a handle on other cities is by their public transport. When you go somewhere new, you should always have a go!

For a start, if you're anywhere abroad, the chances are that your experience will be loads better than anything you could expect in Britain. In Britain, we can't really do public transport. It's dirty and slow and unreliable and crowded and the places where you get on and off are nowhere near anywhere you might get on anything else.

In Sydney, it's great. Everything links up, it's cheap, frequent and clean. You can use one ticket all week on the ferries, the buses and the trains.

And the trains are great! (Here is a lonely tourist not noticing one has arrived behind him...)



They are double decker!



We can't do this in Britain because the bridges and the tunnels weren't designed for double-decker trains and all the platforms would have to be altered - it's too late and would cost too much money now. If only someone had thought of double-decker trains to start with - we seem to be the only country (apart from Hong Kong) which has double-decker buses...

They also have five seats across rather than four which, by my maths, honed by a summer of currency conversion, means that each carriage can take two and half times as many passengers as a British train.

But if all this wasn't clever enough, they go underground too. You don't have to get off a train to get on a tube, the train becomes a tube by the simple expedient of going into a tunnel. (A very high, double-decker tunnel...)

And Circular Quay probably has one of the best views of any railway station...



But if you're commuting (easily and efficiently), you probably don't notice...