I wouldn't expect the people in their transit department are hired for their English ability. Since Spanish and Catalan are important languages there I would expect that I need to learn at least one of them to learn from there. Of course if Spain wanted to teach the world how they do it English would make more sense as it is the dominate trade language today - but I can't think of any reason why Spain would care to teach others. It thus is on the rest of the world to learn Spanish to learn from them.

We might be able to learn from the Chinese or Russians. I'm not sure what their cost structures are like. Learning best practices from high cost areas won't help you control costs, which rules out all English speaking countries.