The best cities in the world have good public transportation, including Melbourne and Sydney. Each of them had extensive heavy rail networks. Melbourne had multiple train lines and hundreds of train stations connecting the whole area. Sydney's rail network was similarly sized.

One thing that Melbourne had was a great public tram system. We have a single streetcar line in Seattle and are talking about adding more, but Melbourne is way ahead of us. The trams serve the CBD very well and go outside of the CBD to serve the inner city, similarly to how buses would, but easier to access and with a dedicated right of way.

Sydney didn't have trams, which made it more difficult for us to get around the CBD. However, Sydney has a pretty extensive ferry network to serve a lot of areas along its harbor.

Surprisingly, both cities are fairly low-density outside of the CBD, and part of this is because of the extensive heavy rail networks, which have been place for more than a century, and allowed locals to live more than walking-distance away from the CBD. The heavy rail networks were very well used, though, and very extensive.

We didn't get a good taste of the bus system in either city, but Sydney had more buses because they didn't have trams.

Overall, public transportation was great over there. Seattle's definitely a smaller city, but our public transportation system is a far cry from the great systems of Melbourne and Sydney.