Perth has buses. Oodles of buses. More buses than cars it seems. The Perth CBD doesn't have a lot of traffic when compared to Melbourne. The streets aren't as wide, the side-streets are tiny, and the city is cut in half by pedestrian mall. Either there are no cars, or they keep away.
We took the bus from the airport to the city. We just missed one, but the next arrived in 15 minutes. Like almost all buses in the city. It cost less than $4. The bus from Melbourne airport is $15. A taxi on the way back from Perth was about $25.
The Perth CBD has three free buses, the CATs. Red, Blue and Yellow. We travelled all three bus routes, through the CBD, East Perth, Northbridge, West Perth and along the terrace. We saw many a resident using the buses for their shopping. Most seemed to get on/off at Forrest Chase, the main shopping mall.
There is also a CAT in Fremantle, although we didn't use this. There is a fairly new CAT in Mandurah that travels "express" from the train station to the waterside. Very handy, well labelled, every 15 minutes.
Is 15 minutes the magic number?
Buses appear to stop at every stop, even if no-one pushes the button. Some stops are timed and the bus driver must wait, but they always informed you how long the wait was. All of the bus drivers looked very happy, drove very carefully, always said thank-you and hello and happily answered questions. I never once cracked my head on a pole because the bus driver took off or stopped too fast. It was a strange feeling getting off the bus without concussion.
All of the CAT stops included an indicator of when the next bus was arriving (in minutes). None of them had timetables. It was glorious. It's all I've ever wanted in Melbourne.
Apart from travelling to and from the train station to Hillary's Harbour to go the Aquarium, we only used the free buses. This was the only time when the zones may have tricked us. The train station was in zone 2, but the bus travelled to zone 3. Luckily we discovered this beforehand and bought day rider tickets. Also, this bus didn't come as often, and luckily we went to the aquarium on the last day of school holidays when there were more services, otherwise we would have had to wait over an hour.
Also, public transport glory doesn't extend beyond the city. We travelled to the Swan Valley thinking we could public-transport to the breweries, only to discover there is only one bus that comes every hour and costs $30. So we walked to the Iron Bark brewery from the train station. It's a really friggin' long way.
Buses in the city own the road. Often they'd swing right, taking up two lanes, before turning left. Something could never do in Melbourne. Too much traffic.
Perhaps bus travel glory requires removing cars from the roads?
Perth has hardly any peak hour, and drivers leave a ton of room between each other. Hardly any tail gating or running red lights.
Perth is pedestrian friendly to a huge degree. You can get almost everywhere without crossing a road. Overpasses, underpasses, malls. Often then the pedestrian lights go green at an intersection, both directions of traffic will stop, allowing everyone to cross diagonally (like at Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street). But not always. We didn't quite figure out the trick...
I often wondered in Perth if I would feel the same way about Melbourne's buses if I was just on holidays. I hate the buses in Melbourne. They're constantly very very late, making the time tables irrelevant. They're infrequent, stop running too early, and the bus drivers are usually impatient and rude.
But maybe if I wasn't in a hurry, if I wasn't commuting but just travelling to a tourist spot, and travelling during the day, maybe it wouldn't seem so bad?