While chatting at a business function recently, my colleagues and I were joined by a transport expert fresh back from a fact-finding mission in Asia. That's where the rest of us had spent much of our professional lives, so conversation quickly turned to useful things we had observed there that could be adopted in Australia.

Raised first was the helpful Japanese custom on railways across the country - whether subways, suburban or long-distance trains - of marking each station's name board with not only the name of the station you've just arrived at but underneath it, the name of the one preceding and the one following. That's handy for anyone on an unfamiliar line, whether Japanese or foreign, and encourages passengers to move to the door in advance of the train stopping where you're going to get off. It's a simple and logical triangulation that not only increases efficiency but also makes some passengers a little more relaxed that they might otherwise be.

The transport expert had visited Japan but hadn't noticed this. He'd had a short trip on the Bullet Train but used the time to catch up on sleep.

We pushed the point but it went right over his head.

‘I can't see how this is relevant to Australia,' he said, with an air of petulance.

‘Because it's so damn functional,' one of my colleagues, Simon, persisted.

‘Maybe so,' the expert replied, ‘but that doesn't mean we should change all of our station signs here.'

‘Why not?' Simon countered. ‘There's a key line in Sydney that has the name of each station mentioned three times on the name boards. That might be a useful place to start cleaning up the system.'

The expert was unmoved, but Simon wasn't about to give up.

‘Imagine,' he said, ‘if the driver on that line shouted out the name of the station three times before the train pulled in. That really would highlight how stupid things can get here!'

We all laughed, except for the expert. He glanced at our drinks as though the reason for our cantankerousness might be evident there. We were all on mineral water and orange juice, so that provided no solace. He politely excused himself and walked off.

But Simon was still in a state of high dudgeon.

‘Can you believe,' he said, ‘that someone like him could fail to see the logic in something like that? Really?'

We thought that a way to distract Simon might be to throw up another worthwhile case and digress onto that.

‘How about those pedestrian crossings in Taiwan?' another colleague suggested. ‘When you cross at the lights there, the green figure not only lights up but runs faster and faster as your time starts to run out.'

We were all well acquainted with this example of functional Asian logic, and the fact that the figure is also accompanied by sound that speeds up as time diminishes. That's a real help to the blind.

‘If we'd used that example first up,' Simon laughed, ‘he'd probably have raced out of the room!'

We spent time trying to work out why a transport expert would be so antithetical to the straightforward case we'd put forward. The only explanation we could think of was that fact-finding missions are often driven by a quest for grand ideas, especially of the type that looks good when you present on them on return. They mightn't ultimately lead anywhere, but they can be helpful to promotion in the short term.

Whether or not this is a distinctly Australian habit, we couldn't quite figure out. If it is, it must come from being far away from the action and missing the trees in the foreground by focusing on prized Californian Redwoods on the ridge in the distance.

Warren Reed is a former chief operating officer of CEDA, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.