I don't know about trains, but where I live in Australia buses can be up to one hour late.
There are real time data available for our transport system which I find to be super useful so I can leave to get to a stop at the right time.
Don't get me wrong, I do think we complain a little too much about public transport in Sydney (when in reality, it's actually fine most of the time). But it definitely does have some pretty serious flaws (too many single points of failure is the most obvious one -- especially the Strathfield-Paramatta stretch of track which is core to the running of 7 [out of 9] different lines without any way to route around it).