So I spent almost 2 weeks at the beginning of July in Sydney. Sydney is one of my favorite cities (probably my favorite English-speaking city), and I want to explain some of the things I like about it in this thread. The set of photos from my trip is at flickr.com/photos/dbaron/alb…

For a start, Sydney has great weather. January average high 26.5°C/80°F, average low 19.6°C/67°F (though there are serious hot spells sometimes). July average high 17.4°C/63°F, average low 8.7°C/48°F. 1.2m/48" of rain per year, so pretty green. And pretty sunny.

The city center feels dense. I think it feels more like a big city than any city in the US other than NYC. And it's getting that density through infill; replacing old 4-6 story buildings with 40-60 story buildings: flickr.com/photos/dbaron/438… flickr.com/photos/dbaron/438…

There's a ton of construction activity. Yes, housing has gotten expensive, but they're building plenty of new housing. Maybe not enough, but they're building way more than the Bay Area. Feels like more than Seattle.

On the negative side, the city center is pretty car-centric, and pedestrian hostile. Intersections in the core have beg buttons for pedestrians. Sometimes the person at the front of the crowd of 20 waiting to cross doesn't press it... and then it's a crowd of 50.

To make it worse, the pedestrian signals turn red quickly, even if the cars have a long green, e.g., on Goulburn Street. And there are some dangerous slip lanes, such as the one right outside the main exit of Museum Station at the SW corner of Hyde Park.

Back to the positives, the transit system is pretty good compared to most US systems. It has a pretty unified fare payment system and planning system run by the state government. And they're building a new subway line (their first! yes, a bit behind) and a new light rail line.

On the weekends, instead of running infrequent service, they cut the fares to encourage people to travel, by cutting the per-day fare maximums. The Sunday fare cap is lower than a single short train ride. It's also nice that ferries are well integrated into the transit system.