Having been to Tokyo and lived with a Japanese family, I'd just like to add a couple of comments that add to how their system works the way it does. For a start, it is almost impossible to get anywhere by car. The speed limits even on main roads are 40kph and most roads are that narrow that stopping buses and cars going in the other direction force cars to stop half the time. Even a small 3k trip to the nearest station, took a good 15 mintues at 7am in the morning. Secondly, having the amount of stations they do is only possible becuase of the high density of Tokyo, which is something we do not actually want to replecate. Becuase of these conditions, it will be impossible for Melbourne to fully replicate Tokyo's system. We must plot our own paths to transport freedom, and for most Australia states, that means helping to decentralize our population to regional centers and increasing investment in higher freqeunecy of services, not nessacarily more lines.

The tenor of Stewart's article could apply equally to poor, deprived Sydney!
On a recent visit to Taiwan, a country about the size of Tasmania, but with Australia's population, therefore economies of scale, I was staggerd by the ease and efficiency of Taipei's transport system. All ticketing is by smart card and is compatible on all modes of public transport. If you have unused credits on your card, you can redeem them for cash at a large number of sales outlets.
Services are speedy, frequent, and scrupulously CLEAN.
The ticketing infrastructure exists there, as in many other countries.
Why don't the hayseeds from Awstraya take it up?

A little bit too apologetic about the State Government. The Government is now running around with a copious set of announcements about unfunded improvements to public transport over the next decade. With almost every announcement, there is an asterix saying that it is dependent on Federal Government funding. The Victorian community will not be holding its breath.

The real question is what is the role of the State Government in public transport. It has foresaken running the system to Connex and wants federal funding for its plans. The State Government has become an atrophied bureaucratic barrier to better public transport.

I can see no reason to spend lots of tax payers money on public transport, used by a very small segment of the public.

All they really do is cart shop girls, & publuc servants to work in the city center, each day.

So what's a better solution?

Move the public servants out of the city. Bung a stop on any building in the city, & build some offices in the outer suburbs, where it will be easier for real people to get at our public servants. With any luck, half of them will get lost in the move, & we will have trimed them down to a more reasonable number.

With that overpaid lot out of the city, most of the shop girls won't be needed, as there wont be so many big spending people there. We can now cut the number of trains, not build new ones.

I suppose some of those ugly office buildings will find private business tenants, but most of them will be able to be converted to apartments, for those who like to be at the centre of things.

With any luck these tenants won't notice the centre has moved to the outside, suburbs that is. If we get real lucky, they will get jobs as shop girls, then we won't need any public transport, at all.

QED; Problem solved, & it didn't cost a cent, except for the developers who have to build the new outer centre, in the suburbs.

Even if you can't see the beauty of all this, there's still no point in more public transport. All those public servants will be telecommuting to their non jobs, in the near future so the result will be the same, but without the saving in wages. Even public servants will probably be able to find their home, & log on.

I refuse to use public transport until they deal with social problems such as crime the leftwing has created.