London's public transport best in the world.

I'm pleased to say that my pride in the London public-transport system and belief that it is the best in the world has finally been (kind of) officially supported. A survey by the independent group TripAdvisor asked 2,000 international travellers to rate transport networks in major cities around the world, using the criteria of safety, ease of access, frequency of services, cost, cleanliness, comfort and how comprehensively covered a city is.

London was ranked as the best in the world by 25% of the respondents, with New York (16%) trailing in a distant second and Paris (12%) third. Unsurprisingly to those who have visited the city, Los Angeles came last in the poll. Washington DC, meanwhile, was deemed to have the cleanest and safest public-transport network, despite only coming in fourth overall in the ranking. It is also nice to hear that only 9% of those surveyed declared that recent terrorist attacks have scared them into avoiding public transport altogether.

These results serve to confirm the pride which many Londoners feel about their public transport system. From Harry Beck's world-famous Tube Map

, acknowledged as a piece of art in its own right, to the equally well-known warning to 'Mind the Gap', the Underground is not just a means of getting from A to B, but also a symbol of the city and the country. This is of course why it was chosen as a target by terrorists last year, but the stoical way in which Londoners returned to the Tube as usual the next day was a fine example of British grit and obstinacy. The names of stops on the Tube have even ingrained themselves into pop culture, forever imortalised in songs such as the Kink's Waterloo Sunset and Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street. For a more recent, and rather amusing, musical homage to the Tube which typifies the British people's love of complaining about the things they love the most try this song

(I must warn you though that it contains strong and potentially offensive language).

Of course problems remain with London's public-transport system, not least the exorbitant prices which make it the most expensive in the world, but for the millions of businessmen, tourists, buskers, party-goers and other assorted users who represent London's ethnic, social and cultural diversity, it remains a symbol of the city and something to be proud about.