the weather has to be not too inclement, and Sydney is pretty hilly, warm, humid and wet so you probably need to shower and change clothes at your destination. I think that imaginative public transport solutions, including cross-suburban services between radial hubs, possibly using mini buses, plus improved availability of taxis, would go a long way to making public transport more viable for more people. Steve, re public transport being cheaper -- it wouldn't seem that hard to convince families that they don't need 2 or 3 cars, if decent public transport was available. But there's much that could be done to reduce the 'sunk cost' problem for car ownership -- e.g. scrap registration/fixed CTP insurance, reduce other one-time on-road costs where possible, notch up the fuel excise, introduce congestion charging and encourage pay-per-km insurance to become the norm (e.g. via tax incentives). However...I'd also point out that in most European countries the same sunk-cost issues apply, but in Germany, e.g. while almost every family owns a car, public transport (and of course bicycling) is still much more widely used than Australia, despite the fact that public transport between cities in Germany is not particularly cheap, there are excellent roads (none of which are tolled!), and for much of the year the weather is not particularly conducive to any form of travel that involves not being protected from the elements (P.T. of course invariably involves some amount of this). It's only ~800 metres from Cheltenham station to Southland by my