Train in vain

Wow. Well I came back to the UK being deliberately contrarian about public transport, which I do think is very unfairly maligned here. London has one of the world's great public metros: compare it to Sydney, where less than a dozen stations see more than four trains an hour in the evening rush, and you realise how little people have to complain about.

Then I had the nightmare journey to work today. Trains were jammed up at Harrow-on-the-Hill; our semi-fast service became an 'all stations' one to pick up the refugees; we crawled through snarls and red lights to Wembley Park, people sardined along the aisles.

But I'm going to be stubborn and stick to my guns on this. Stuff happens when you're carrying one billion passengers a year, and when it's rush hour problems can escalate fast. The Underground is so vast that something is always going to go wrong: the Central and Northern lines alone carry more people than all of Sydney's regional services north to Newcastle and south to Wollongong.

Most importantly, money is being spent to improve the situation. Admittedly, London might be splashing more cash because it's in a pre-Olympics spending binge, while Sydney has been stuck in a post-Olympics hangover for 11 years. But stuff like Crossrail and Thameslink won't be delivered in time for the games, and most of the Overground is pretty peripheral to it.

Basically, I think the political, media and business elites in the UK have come to their senses over the past decade or so and recognised that improving mass infrastructure is a really good way of improving people's quality of life.

The costs look big on paper, but that's because these are necessarily big projects: I'm sure if you totted up what a country spends on rubbish disposal each year you'd get a big figure too, but no one's suggesting we stop doing it. Decent public transport should be seen in the same way, as more a necessity than a luxury. Sydney is a long way away from waking up to that fact.