Everyone in Boston hates on the T because it shuts down during the winter a lot. I love it though. It runs frequently (most of the time), it gets me to wherever I need to be, and it doesn’t charge you based on how far you go (yet). When I co-oped in Washington D.C. the metro was terrible–it was under constant construction, which meant it was single-tracking a lot of the time, and it was super expensive.
Sydney’s metro system is somewhere between the two. It runs very efficiently and goes pretty much everywhere, but it is SO expensive. Seriously. Without a concession card, which isn’t available to study abroad students, it costs you $4-5 to go 4 stops on the train. Except on Sundays, when you can go anywhere for $2.50, which is a miracle. However, Sydney’s train network goes crazy far outside the city, which is something it definitely has over Boston. I can get two hours south of Sydney, two hours north, and an hour and half west, all for the regular ticket price.
This has been particularly helpful when it comes to exploring my new area. A couple weeks ago a group of friends and I went into the Royal National Park and hiked around, and the train stop we got off at was 50 meters from the trailhead. Last weekend I went down to Kiama, which is the last stop on the southern train line, and I got to spend the day in a cute, non-touristy beach town. It was beautiful, although over the next three days there were two shark sightings, so I will not be going in the ocean there again.
When it comes to classes, I mostly walk onto campus. Even though I chose the farthest Urbanest from campus, it’s still only a 25 minute walk. In the mornings it wakes me up before I get to my 9am classes, and in the afternoons when I’m coming back it’s a nice stroll.
That being said, I do run late sometimes, and when I do there are no less than 8 buses that leave from central station that I can take to get to school. The bus ride is only about 7 minutes long, and if I oversleep or if I’ve had a really long day it’s nice to know that I can get to and from class really quickly.
