I meant unusable. Getting anywhere in the middle of the night on the NYC subway these days means waiting 20-30 minutes for a train to _maybe_ show up if it's running at all on the weekends. And that's assuming you don't have to transfer?

Saying that the NYC subway runs "24/7" is questionable when it's basically unusable between the hours of midnight and 6am.

The difference is that other cities have competent people running them who manage to get things on a tight schedule. We need to stop accepting mediocrity and trying to accept the MTA's ineptitude and ask why we can't build anything efficiently in this country.

All of the transit systems in Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur) that i've used make ours seem pitiful and just reinforces how the USA is falling behind in terms of infrastructure. Some are better than others, but across the board they're superior to anything i've used here.

European cities are better as well but tend to be a bit more mixed in my experience.

It's amazing how much of an improvement it is when you use a train and don't worry about whether it's going to show up in a few minutes.

Singapore is an authoritarian state that has made literring an arrestable offense and banned chewing gum. Cleanliness/harassment is not an issue on their public transit like it is here.

I don't recall ever seeing a single homeless on the train in my two visits (outside of little india which is an exception to the rest of the city)

It's significantly better. You can easily transfer lines and be confident your next train will show up when it's supposed to (though i experienced a delay or two). There are definitely lots of neighborhoods/areas that require cars, but even some of those had a bus connecting you.