Wow, I don’t believe it, Melbourne is the world’s #1 city 
How many cities have you been to?
I love Melbourne and lots of people like it but i think it’s foolish to say it’s the best in the world.
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Not as many as I’d like to thus far…
But of all cities/towns in the world, for Melbourne to be the “world’s most livable” a number of years running (among other titles) is something special 
Melbourne must’ve done something right.
jeez I wouldn’t want to be a tenant in one of your investment properties. what a chipper person you must be!
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While I was in Melbourne, I noticed that there are still HEAPS of incandescent/halogen traffic lights lurking about, and there are HEAPS of old black box pedestrian crossing buttons in suburban areas.
I haven’t seen an incandescent traffic light in Sydney for the past 5 or so years (they’re all LED now), and those black box pedestrian crossing buttons for at least ten to fifteen (I distinctly remember using them around 1997-2000 going shopping with my mum before I started primary school).
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Geelong has started rolling out touchless ones using infrared. No button touching needed.
Had no idea those existed. A dream come true for me considering I refuse to touch pedestrian crossing buttons with my hands. Can’t remember the last time I saw those old style boxes. Must’ve been before the OCD kicked in, before I started primary school in 197… Can’t imagine trying to push that little button with my elbow.
The last black box pedestrian crossing buttons I saw in NSW were at an intersection in one of the Newcastle suburbs in 2011, which have since been converted to the standard kind.
There was (is?) also a non-standard black box pedestrian crossing button at a pelican crossing in Glen Innes when I passed through in about 2013? Not sure about the status of that one though.
I just wonder how long it will take for the flashing red men to be replaced in Melbourne by the countdown clock that you see in some Sydney crossings and a few Brisbane CBD crossings?
I have so many questions. What was the fall of Rome like?
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It was bitch trying to cross the Appian Way when the cavalry was passing through town.
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What area were you in? I haven’t seen one of those in ages either.
There are still lots of incandescent traffic lights though… but more and more are becoming LED.
One thing I noticed the last time I was up in Sydney - the walk cycles on pedestrian crossings (at least in the city centre) are much shorter. The flashing red seems to make it last about the same time overall, so I suppose they think people walk slower?
I wonder why we need the buttons anyway - in many other countries the buttons don’t actually activate the lights, they just go off on a normal cycle.
In Germany most lights don’t even have a pedestrian button, as you said they just fire in a loop.
It allows more flexibility for variations in timing and cycles depending on traffic. For example, at some intersections in non-peak times (eg. late at time) the more main road will get a continuous green with lights only changing when traffic wants to cross said road. There are sensors for the traffic under the road, so a button is required for pedestrians to activate the lights. At these times the lights can change almost immediately, making it more efficient than waiting for a preset cycle.
The same also for lights which are only a pedestrian crossing, as it would be stupid to run them on a cycle and stop traffic when there is no traffic crossing.
It then becomes easier to implement pedestrian crossing buttons at all sets of lights, so that pedestrians reliably know how the intersection works (ie. always find a button to press).
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Yes, I agree - green pedestrian signals are much longer in Melbourne.
Another thing I noticed was that the pedestrian crossing signals instantly change if you’ve just missed the parallel change of traffic lights, but it’s still within the designated crossing time. I was pretty shocked the first time I pressed the pedestrian crossing button and it instantly changed the crossing signal to green and started yapping at me. In Sydney you usually have to wait for the next light cycle if you’ve just missed the signal.
Those old button boxes were jotted about the suburban area. One place I know I saw one was in Doncaster East adjacent to the police station.
I didn’t mean to imply that they’re everywhere, but rather that you can still see many of them in place, whereas in Sydney you just never ever see them anymore.
Also in the above article:
Matt Barrie, of the ASX-listed global skills marketplace Freelancer.com, with 550 employees including more than 100 in Australia, says it is “very hard now to get people to come to Sydney” because the city has become so boring and expensive during what he describes as Premier Mike Baird’s tenure of over-regulation and over-zealous policing.
I guess it’s little wonder why Melbourne is growing at a faster rate than Sydney in terms of population these days.
I have been to Sydney once and quite liked it. Whether I want to move and live there that’s a whole different story.
Off to Melbourne in a few weeks, I could easily live there! Just not sure why Sydney doesn’t have that same effect on me. Anywhere apart from sydney would be so better then living in Perth.
Ahh yes, plenty can be said about Mike Baird’s visions for Sydney and New South Wales (not all of that is positive) but that is for another time and topic! 
I daresay that our urban sprawl, chronic road/public transport congestion and ridiculously expensive/unaffordable real estate probably has something to do with it!
Well, I’ve personally never been to Perth so can’t comment on whether or not it’s a better place to live than Sydney. Maybe one of these days, I’ll make it over to the West though! 