We have spent some time in several small and medium sized provincial European cities in recent years. I’m amazed and impressed with how many of them have brilliant light rail systems and bus systems - not to mention their fantastic national and international railways which we all know about.

Many of these are cities much smaller than Auckland and it’s a bit embarrassing. It seems to me that a key factor here is not population per se, but population density. We’re too thinly-spread which screws-up the per km cost/passenger efficiency calculation.