The bus system here is also wonderful Every bus in the entire country runs on the same system. You can buy one card in one place, and use it on the busses or trams anywhere in the entire country. Compared to the bay area (BART, AC Transit, Muni, whatever they have in Marin, SamTrans, whatever they have in San Jose) this conveniece is amazing.

More importantly though, they run frequently and quickly. Our building (noticably outside city limits) still gets a bus about every 5 minutes. In rush hour it beats the cars because on the bridge one of the outgoing lanes becomes a dedicated buslane. The bus runs back until nearly 1am on weekdays, and later on weekends.

The sad thing about all this wonderful transit (bike and bus) is that there's really no gradual way to turn a car based system like the US's into a system like the one they have here. You can't eliminate parking and add dozens of busses before people are willing to ride them, and they won't be willing till there are enough of them.