Having just returned from a two-week vacation in Hong Kong, I can tell you it has a public transit system about which Torontonians can only dream.

Its backbone is a modern and efficient eight-line subway system, serving one of the most densely populated regions on Earth — over seven million people living within 400 square miles.

While Hong Kong also has buses and streetcars (called trams), traffic congestion is such that without a workable subway system, Hong Kong — a vibrant society — would grind to a halt in a day.

Instead, its public transit system, run by the Mass Transit Railway Corp. (MTR), gets everything right that Toronto has gotten wrong.

Payment is by Octopus card, which can be purchased and refilled inside the subway system and at many convenience stores, where it can also be used to buy other items.

You tap the card on the turnstile when you enter the system and again when you leave — and pay based upon your amount of travel.

The Octopus card also works on the above-ground transit systems, including the ferries crossing Victoria Harbour, which connects Hong Kong to Kowloon.

Commuters are encouraged to get to work early through discounted fares if they use the subway system before the main rush hour hits in the morning.

You can take the subway to the airport — and check your luggage before getting on it.

The next time you see it will be when your flight arrives wherever it’s taking you.

The station platforms are glassed in, with partitions that open up simultaneously with the doors, preventing suicides and people accidentally falling onto the tracks or being deliberately thrown onto them.

Despite the fact Hong Kong receives no annual snow accumulation, city planners wisely decided decades ago that underground subways were the most efficient method of moving people.

In Toronto, we increase urban density in the hopes traffic congestion will make driving so miserable, people will be forced onto our outdated subway system.

In Hong Kong, they built a system for commuters who wouldn’t drive cars even if they could afford them, because it’s easier and more affordable to get around by public transit.

Its financing is also world class.

As The Atlantic monthly reported in September, 2013: “The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation, which manages the subway and bus systems on Hong Kong Island and, since 2006, in the northern part of Kowloon, is considered the gold standard for transit management worldwide. In 2012, the MTR produced revenue of 36 billion Hong Kong Dollars (about U.S $5 billion) — turning a profit of $2 billion in the process. Most impressively, the farebox recovery ratio (the percentage of operational costs covered by fares) for the system was 185 percent, the world’s highest. Worldwide, these numbers are practically unheard of — the next highest urban ratio, Singapore, is a mere 125 percent.”

It’s not that Hong Kong’s transit system is perfect.

For example, you have to learn which transfer points between subway lines to use during rush hour to avoid huge crowds waiting for trains — but the complaints are of an entirely different order than in Toronto.

One transit user complained to me the MTR should have already made it possible for people to pay their fares using cell phones, instead of the convenient Octopus card.

Oh, and one more thing. There’s a fight going on between Uber and the taxi industry in Hong Kong, too.