Education and transport in Melbourne

Education.
Some of Australia's most prominent and well known schools are based in Melbourne. Of the top twenty high schools in Australia according to the Better Education ranking, six are in Melbourne.
Melbourne is the home of seven public universities: the University of Melbourne, Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology, Deakin University, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University), La Trobe University, and Victoria University.

Monash University
Deakin University
Victoria University
La Trobe University

Melbourne universities have campuses all over Australia and some internationally. Swinburne University has campuses in Malaysia, while Monash has a research centre based in Prato, Italy.
The University of Melbourne, the second oldest university in Australia, was ranked first among Australian universities in the 2016 THES international rankings. In 2018 Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the University of Melbourne the 32rd best university in the world which is higher than the rankings in 2016 and 2017, Monash University was ranked 80th best. Both are members of the Group of Eight, a coalition of leading Australian tertiary institutions offering comprehensive and leading education.
Deakin University maintains two major campuses in Melbourne and Geelong, and is the third largest university in Victoria. In recent years, the number of international students at Melbourne's universities has risen rapidly, a result of an increasing number of places being made available to full fee paying students.

Education in Melbourne is overseen by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD), whose role is to 'provide policy and planning advice for the delivery of education.
Melbourne is also home to a number of theological colleges, including the Presbyterian Theological College, the Reformed Theological College, Ridley College and the Melbourne School of Theology.

Transport.
Like many Australian cities, Melbourne has a high dependency on the automobile for transport, particularly in the outer suburban areas where the largest number of cars are bought, with a total of 3.6 million private vehicles using 22,320 km (13,870 mi) of road, and one of the highest lengths of road per capita in the world.
Today it has an extensive network of freeways and arterial roadways used by private vehicles including freight as well as public transport systems including buses and taxis.

Major highways feeding into the city include the Eastern Freeway, Monash Freeway and West Gate Freeway (which spans the large West Gate Bridge), whilst other freeways circumnavigate the city or lead to other major cities, including CityLink (which spans the large Bolte Bridge), Eastlink, the Western Ring Road, Calder Freeway, Tullamarine Freeway (main airport link) and the Hume Freeway which links Melbourne and Sydney.
Eastern Freeway
Monash Freeway
West Gate Freeway

Flinders Street station
Melbourne has an integrated public transport system based around extensive train, tram, bus and taxi systems. Flinders Street station was the world's busiest passenger station in 1927 and Melbourne's tram network overtook Sydney's to become the world's largest in the 1940s. Since the 1940s, public transport usage in Melbourne declined due to a rapid expansion of the road and freeway network, with the largest declines in tram and bus usage.
The Melbourne rail network dates back to the 1850s gold rush era, and today consists of 218 suburban stations on 16 lines which radiate from the City Loop, a mostly-underground subway system around the CBD.

Ship transport is an important component of Melbourne's transport system.
The Port of Melbourne is Australia's largest container and general cargo port and also its busiest.
The port handled two million shipping containers in a 12-month period during 2007, making it one of the top five ports in the Southern Hemisphere.
Station Pier on Port Phillip Bay is the main passenger ship terminal with cruise ships and the Spirit of Tasmania ferries which cross Bass Strait to Tasmania docking there. Ferries and water taxis run from berths along the Yarra River as far upstream as South Yarra and across Port Phillip Bay.

Port of Melbourne

Melbourne has four airports. Melbourne Airport, at Tullamarine, is the city's main international and domestic gateway and second busiest in Australia.
The airport is home base for passenger airlines Jetstar Airways and Tiger Airways Australia and cargo airlines Australian air Express and Toll Priority; and is a major hub for Qantas and Virgin Australia. Avalon Airport, located between Melbourne and Geelong, is a secondary hub of Jetstar. It is also used as a freight and maintenance facility. Buses and taxis are the only forms of public transport to and from the city's main airports.

Air Ambulance facilities are available for domestic and international transportation of patients.
Melbourne also has a significant general aviation airport, Moorabbin Airport in the city's south east that also handles a small number of passenger flights. Essendon Airport, which was once the city's main airport also handles passenger flights, general aviation and some cargo flights.
The city also has a bicycle sharing system. It was established in 2010 and uses a network of marked road lanes and segregated cycle facilities.