Think you're paying too much for public transport? Turns out Australians are getting a pretty good deal, according to new research that compares fares to minimum wages in 24 global cities.
Australian capital cities made up six of the 10 most affordable places for public transport - ahead of London, New York, Paris and Berlin - according to the 2015 Fare Benchmarking Report by Brisbane-based consultancy NineSquared.
The findings fly in the face of other reports that have for years declared Australia one of the most expensive countries to catch a train or bus.
The report compares how long a minimum wage earner in each city would need to work to afford three kinds of trips: the cheapest (generally the shortest trip), the average (by distance), and the longest (then converted into a calculation per kilometre). 
The five most affordable systems all have flat fare structures, with minimum wage earners in Beijing only needing to work seven minutes to afford the fare for an average journey in the city.
London's tube system was the most expensive network. Its fare for the average trip required almost 54 minutes' work on the minimum wage.
Melbourne ranked 10th, requiring just over 24 minutes of work on minimum wage to cover the average fare.
Sydney buses ranked 7th (23 minutes) and Sydney trains came 13th (27 minutes).
These times were calculated based on the average distance travelled by public transport in each city - a measure closely linked to population density and city design.
"Greater density may mean, for example, that a customer does not need to travel as far to access the economic and social opportunities that the travel offers," the report said. "This disparity is reflected in average trip lengths on public transport."
In London, for example, the average bus or train journey is less than two kilometres. By contrast, the average train trip in Sydney was 17.1 kilometres - more than eight times longer - and the average Sydney bus trip was 6.7 kilometres in 2011-12.
Australian cities made up four of the top five most affordable public transport networks when ranked by the time a minimum wage earner would need to work to travel one kilometre of the longest possible journey.
Sydney trains ranked 2nd behind Beijing rail, with minimum wage earners needing to work for just under 11 seconds to cover the cost of travelling one kilometre on this ticket. Beijing workers needed just over 10 seconds to cover the cost of travelling the same distance.
Melbourne ranked 3rd (11.8 seconds) while Sydney Buses ranked worst of the Australian cities, coming 19th (50.3 seconds).
Australian public transport networks cover far larger distances than many European and American networks, the report found. South East Queensland and Sydney trains offered the longest trips - more than 250 kilometres - compared with 67 kilometres on the London Underground, 40 kilometres on the New York subway or 32 kilometres on the Paris metro or bus network.
When it comes to short trips, Beijing Bus and Rail were the most affordable, with minimum wage earners needing to work only seven minutes to afford the cheapest fare.
By contrast, London's minimum wage earners need to work more more than 42 minutes to afford the cheapest fare.
Melbourne offers the worst value for money out of Australia's capital cities by this measure, while Sydney buses offers the best.
"With the short trip ranking, those cities with flat fares - New York, Chicago, Portland, Vancouver, Toronto - all come out the worst," said NineSquared director, Robin Barlow.
"Flat fare cities ??? penalise people to take short trips, effectively. But if you take long trips, it's fantastic."

Value for money?
The report set out to investigate whether Australia really did have the most expensive fares in the world, as often claimed in media and other reports.
"Fares across the country are not particularly high by international standards," Mr Barlow said.
"We may have expensive public transport, but we also have pretty high wage rates so the two need to balance out against each other."
However, he noted that the report looked only at ticket prices without considering the quality of each transport network offered.
"There's tension between providing a high-frequency, quality service ???. and the fare you pay. We've only looked at one side of it," Mr Barlow said.
It's a critical omission, according to transport experts.
"To say you're getting value for money in an Australian city is questionable, really," said University of Melbourne senior lecturer John Stone. "[The report] says that's not what it's looking at, but then I think it's missed the main point."
Public transport in cities such as Vienna, Berlin and Munich offered residents an alternative to owning a car, he said.
"Whereas what we're marketing in Australian cities is something that might get you to work if you happen to be lucky enough to live and work along the rail line. It doesn't give you 24-hour-a-day access."
He said the widely cited argument that Australian cities lack the population density to support a competitive public transport system was "an excuse".
"You only have to go to Vancouver or Toronto to show that's not the case. In global cities with comparable density in the suburbs, public transport does compete because they concentrate on making sure people can make connections between suburban services and fast radial services."
One of the biggest problems in Sydney was a fare structure that "penalised people financially" for transferring between buses and trains, Dr Stone said.
And both Melbourne and Sydney needed to simplify their bus routes to encourage fast, effective transfers.
"Suburban bus routes in both cities were developed by private companies aiming to link as many possible destinations within their own service, to maximise their own ridership at the expense of competing operators," Dr Stone said.
The result was a slow, complicated system that duplicates much of the rail network.
"We've got a lot of buses travelling a lot of kilometres with very few people on board ??? That sort of inefficiency means it's never going to be possible to put in the frequencies needed to attract people to public transport."
Transport expert Chris Hale, of Hale Consulting, said people cared far more about the quality and frequency of public transport than about cheap fares.
"When we actually look at how people behave, they're mostly indifferent to price," he said.
"The bulk of users are ready, willing and able to pay that additional contribution ??? but governments need to make it very clear that the additional revenue is directly linked to an effective program of service improvement."