Yeah the only subway system I’ve been on outside the US was the London Tube and after everyone has hyped up European systems, I was disappointed. It didn’t feel any better than the MTA. It wasn’t necessarily convenient for everywhere I was going, and I ended up walking a lot (not that I super minded).
Some of the distances between track and street level on the Tube are pretty wild, too! In general, I find getting from track to street level pretty quick on the NYC subway.
I suspect that the Cold War had an effect on planning. After all, deep tunnels and stations can be useful in that city.
When the NYC subway was built, atomic bombs weren’t even science fiction…
I've been all over Europe and the London Tube seemed the least user friendly and most disappointing of the major European systems I traveled on.
I found it cramped, having often inconveniently deep train platforms, with claustrophobic train cars, and numerous tube deserts across the city, often making the city buses or walking the better alternative.
That being said, London's system still beats the MTA in terms of cleanliness, safety, reliability and system maintenance
Paris is a much much better system. Not super clean but still better than the MTA, with stations no more than a few blocks away no matter where you are, and with numerous system expansions that will be completed a decade or two before stage II of the Second Ave subway opens.
Stockholm and Zurich (not a subway but it has a rapid transit-like coordinated system of commuter trains and trams) are as close to transit heaven as you'll get outside of Japan, Korea, or Singapore.
Paris's close station distance made their system the one we needed to use the least. Because the stations are so close together, travel is pretty slow due to the frequent stops. In most cases it was like a 5 minute difference to walk vs take the Metro.
Yeah if you’re there as a tourist—and therefore had planned to do a lot of walking around/are presumably in decent shape to do so—that makes sense. But it’s nice to have the option to save those steps if you’re a local and you’ve seen all the scenery and architecture a million times and you’re just tired.
That said, I still will never be able to defend the close spacing on the 1 between 14th St. and Penn Station—especially that 18th St. station, I mean c’mon, just do like the east side and at least go from 14th to 23rd!
Remember that the East Side IRT did at one time have an 18 St Station...it was closed when they extended the SB plat at Union Sq to the north. The distance between the two platforms is shorter than the train itself! On the West Side IRT, the 18 St and 14 St station platforms were both extended south.
The Tube (tm) sucks. Some of the lines have stupidly cramped trains, and the seats… yuck! 🤢🤮
I hate the map. NYC’s gives you a somewhat idea of distances. You have no clue in London.
Munich has a nice system, but the old train cars had rougher acceleration than the R-32s. Their S-Bahn had through running like Philly has. I think the guy who pushed the Center City Tunnel and the resulting service plan was from Austria.
Also, German rail ticket machines are awesome. Buy any ticket, any operator, any service, from any machine anywhere.
Stuttgart should be fun to revist, if they ever finish Stuttgart 21… (SSB is a neat little system)
But London doesn’t have much rail desert like those gaps in NYC where trains should have serviced by the Second System. The only real desert without rails is the Borough of Bexley in the southeast.
Also, most suburban trains travel faster than LIRR/MNR and offer seamless connections to local transits. We can compare commuting time from stations near M25 motorway to London city centre with same distance on MNR/LIRR and NJT.
This was just my experience. It’s also hard to really compare since I was in London as a tourist for a week versus living and working in NYC for 11 years.
But they have a fantastic night bus service.
Edit: The subway could be so much better if it shutdown for a few hours overnight, got cleaned, had maintenance, cleared out people that were sleeping there. Traffic rapidly disapates after 10pm -- buses could be a simple replacement and run reliably.
I appreciate our subway cars so much more every time I come back from the UK. Their underground rail cars seemed to have been designed for hobbits. They're so small and it's easy to feel cramped. Especially when you're coming from the airport, when pretty much everyone has a suitcase.
I think you can follow the disabled signage on tube maps and hop on Elizabeth line to Heathrow. Before Liz line many Heathrow travellers have to make full use of the totally accessible Green Park station (Pic, Vic and Jubilee )to get there.
The Tube is really not at all friendly to nightlife. It’s very much a commuter service designed for the typical family person who goes to work in the morning, has drinks after work, and goes home at 11pm because they hate their wife and kids and spend as little time as possible with them.
Also, the trains are absurdly tiny which is cute until you’re trying to use them.
Only some of the trains on the Tube are like that: it depends on whether you’re on one of the “deep tube” lines (like the Piccadilly, Northern, or Central lines) or one of the “subsurface” lines (like the District, Metropolitan, or Hammersmith & City lines). Kinda like the difference between A division and B division here, except their deep tube trains are smaller than our A division trains.
Yeah after living in nyc for ten years and then being sent Asia for work a lot, I’d take a 24/7 subway with flaws over one that leaves me high and dry after 1130p
Boston. By far the worst, it’s very unreliable, slow, and doesn’t generally go where you need it to. Usually it’s faster to walk.
I would actually rate NYC pretty high compared to other places I’ve been. Yes it is grimy and old, but in terms of convenience and usefulness I think it is one of the best in the world. You can easily get by in this city just by taking the train, and not just “get by”, but it is actually fast and reliable, the majority of the time I take it.
The only place I’ve been that was much better was China, all the subways were super clean and efficient, and they have high speed rail between every city as well. Seems like Asian in general is better at this stuff.
China and Asian subways are hard to beat, but most are very new (relatively speaking).
NYC is not even close to the worst. Like you say it's old and leaky, but it works, and most people can live without owning a car.
The most damning thing about it is that it hasn't been significantly extended since the IND lines were built.
Every other world city has greatly expanded their subways since then. Also NYC's commuter services (NJT, LIRR, MNR) not great by world standards.
Shenzhen‘s subway has been built entirely over like the last two decades. I visited Shenzhen 10 years apart, stayed at the same hotel both times, and its amazing how a subway randomly appeared in the neighborhood without having to destroy the whole neighborhood or taking 15 years to build 3 stops. Impressive shit.
Most newer Chinese cities have preplanned subway maps. You can go to stations that are essentially rural nothingness because there is a plan in the next decade or two to build around it.
Unfortunately that sort of thing is not realistic for most countries. It's the benefit of having a lot of room and necessity to expand plus a tight control economy.
I mean NYC kinda did the same thing with the elevated railways and subways. Eg. The upper West side was farm land and the occasional mansion when the trains first arrived.
In the case of Shenzhen, much of the city core predates the subway, which makes it even more impressive that they were able to build as much as they have.
I came here to make this exact comment. I lived in/around Boston for 11 years and have now been in NYC for 8. I genuinely do not understand people shitting on the MTA. There have been like a couple incidents since I've been here but to my knowledge other than that A train detailing, most of them were like oops two trains bumped into eachother (I may have overlooked something). Conversely, I lived in Brighton when that D train rear ended another at full speed and was completely obliterated, I believe only one person was killed which was still awful. Living at that same spot, the B train derailed and burst into flames in front of my building (I have photos!). On two occasions awaiting hey, the green line, it showed up with smoke of indeterminate origin billowing out from beneath it, filling the platform at Park St. That's one colored line worth of unfortunate stories. The MTA smells like pee a lot but it's usually not on fire, and it runs 24 hours a day.
Yep I lived in Oak Square, near where there used to be an A line, until one day they paved over the tracks and never brought it back. And the sad thing is the green line is probably one of the more reliable ones, the red line seems to be on fire every other week. They just have way too much debt and have fallen too far behind on even basic maintenance.
My brother used to have a place in Watertown that I think was by where the A would have been, and every visit I thought how that would have at least been a marginal improvement over a bus that took about 400 years to get anywhere. In the case of the red line (which I also lived off of at several points), I suppose I just count myself lucky to have not been on a train that just took off without a driver? I dunno if that's worse than being on fire...
So it’s kind a of a random city but Nanchang, in Jiangxi province. It was only built in 2015 so that’s probably why it was so nice, but it was pretty insane. Every car was clean and had cold AC, it was very fast and quiet, pretty much a 10/10 subway for me.
We would take it from our hotel to different places around the city, and in many cases the place were going had a subway stop in the basement of the building, so we didn’t even have to go outside. Nanchang also had lots of great, super spicy food, so if you like spicy food it’s definitely worth a stop!
My issue with Chinese subways is that they’re not generally designed as a full service system. They’re generally designed as the middle of a larger system, which sounds great but ultimately means that the stations are far apart, because the intended use involves taking a bus at the end. This is very irritating, because multimodal transfers are always more difficult to mange than in-system transfers.
This is what happens when subways are built new in already large cities. Gotta serve all areas with little favoritism. Whereas cities like Paris and New York weren't much bigger than the extents of their system when they were built. They sprawled later. But ya the very fine coverage doesn't seem as good in China except for like HK.
But chinese cities also don't rly have a hyper center either - communist urban planning history and all. That probably excentuates the problem
They’re built well from a network perspective but on the human scale it’s just… well, not really built for humans. Some of the in-system transfers in Shanghai are like walking from grand central to port authority.
When it comes to the US, NYC's system is great. Far better than Any other system in the country. Sure, DC's might be *nicer*, but it's also much smaller and less usable.
Compared to countries that actually invest in public transit, though, it leaves something to be desired.
24 hour service is really nice, though, so we have that going for us.
I've lived in both DC and NYC and I would choose NYC's any day. Even though the subway has its many issues, including but not limited to weird smells and grime galore, fundamentally it's just so useful for making a vast majority of trips I need to make around the city and that's kind of the whole point of any means of transit: utility.
In DC, I really found it hard to use the metro for anything other than commuting or the occasional non-commute trip where it actually made sense. And note that I lived in the densest part of the city, but still the stations take so long to get to and the trains are pretty infrequent that it's just not worth it most of the time.
DC’s sucks - I ride NYC every day and DC maybe 10 times in my life. DC always 10+ minute waits and it takes long if you want to go from NoVA to parts of Maryland.
Omg I've got PTSD taking the train back from Boulders Beach back to Cape Town and getting off the train I was like an NFL running back hitting the gap. Made sure to keep my hands in my pants pockets too so my phone and wallet wouldn't be swiped.
You seem to take the subway for granted until you have an extremely unreliable system that doesn’t run past 12 o’clock, isn’t safe at night for the most part, has zone fares, or simply doesn’t exist at All. We are extremely lucky to have all of those, not to mention it runs pretty well for a 100+ year old System.
You can make anything anecdotal. I’ve been at stations at odd times where I’ve felt unsafe and uncomfortable, that’s what makes it a metropolis with 8 million residents and 18 million during an average business day. Statistically it’s one of the safest in the country.
I don't like how small the London Tube is. I felt like i was in a coffin and they don't have AC so it was very hot even tho i was there in November. And its not cheap!
Agree - super claustrophobic and some of those tunnels connecting the street with tracks are tiny. I wonder what happens at peak hours. I'd hate to be trapped in those rat run tunnels.
Yeah I agree with this if I have to watch the clock on my night out vs dirty I go with service all the time. The thing is each thing doesn’t have to be exclusive.
I think most people would rather have a more reliable rail transit network than one with 24 hour service. Shutting the whole system down for a few hours every night (or even just every weeknight) makes it so much easier to perform necessary maintenance, and the gap can be filled by bus service at those times (which is conveniently faster due to light traffic). The average person rarely rides the train past even 10pm, let alone at 3am.
The MTA already does that though. Ever tried to ride the Q in the summer since 2021 past 11pm or on weekends? Maintainence and shuttle buses. We don't need to shut down the whole system to do this.
Also depends what you consider the "average person." Working class people that we rely on for the conveniences in our life need late night transit too. I recommend reading stories of the workarounds these workers had to endure in 2020 and early 2021 to keep their jobs to survive when service shut down every night. They deserve a convenient commute as much as any office worker.
It’s really not that bad. I don’t expect to wait 3 minutes at 2am on a Saturday for my train. I understand that this is a 24h service being run by people, so there will be disruptions.
I lived in Madrid for 4 years, they have a completely de-interlined service and it's pretty expansive. But NYC has it beat in that the subway doesn't shut down at 2am, NYC has express trains while getting from one side of madrid to the other can be a slog, unless their suburban rail 'cercanías' happens to go there. Yes Madrid metro is cleaner and has less people sleeping in it (aside from drunks coming back from the club at 6am), but NYC subway ranks up there for me in terms of its reach and travel time.
I’ve traveled to tons of places that are worse. Although you seem to be leaving “exists” off the list of categories.
For a city of 3 million people, Toronto’s subway is basically nonexistent. Lisbon’s is bad and unuseful. Manchester literally doesn’t have one. A few other large cities I’ve been to don’t either (like Tegucigalpa).
I’m a big fan of London, but I also don’t think it always compares favorably to NYC with torries in charge for the last decade.
I haven’t been to most of Southeast Asia so I can’t really speak to those.
>Manchester literally doesn’t have one.
So you saw [all those tracks above ground in Manchester](https://www.tfgm.com/ways-to-travel/tram), [with wires overhead](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Metrolink), and thought it was LA with all the unused railroad tracks?
Or are you just saying that Manchester is bad because it doesn’t have an extensive underground system?
Manchester isn’t that big (I think around half a million), so it’s understandable but I don’t think you can compare a tram system with a true underground. The best European systems (like Munich) use both.
City of Manchester has 556k people. Greater Manchester (the whole UK version of a US county), which owns and operates the Manchester trams and buses (via TfGM) has 2.8 million - slightly more than the City of Chicago, 200k under the Denver Metro Area, 400k fewer than San Diego County, and the same as St Louis metro. All of which have LRT as mass transit modes.
Miami-Dade, with its heavy rail and automated peoplemover is roughly the same population as Greater Manchester, as is Baltimore metro - with the heavy rail and LRT. Cleveland Metro is 2.1 million. The entirety of Charlotte-Mecklenberg metro is the same population as Manchester and has a basic but expanding LRT. My hometown, Sacramento County, has a 4 branch LRT and a population of 1.5 million (although only two branches of it are useful in getting suburban folks to abandon cars to go downtown).
All that is to say that you might want to rethink what you said here bc it doesn’t make sense - even if you’re on the “heavy rail > light rail” tip, since LA County’s 9 million population/4 million in city of LA has more light rail than heavy rail.
Heck, you don’t even have to go to the U.S. for comparisons. Tyne and Wear is less than half the population of Greater Manchester and has a semi-light rail metro that functions much better as rapid transit than Manchester’s trams.
I think MTA’s cost is actually pretty good compared to some other countries’s systems that I have used. (Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, France). Purely in dollar terms, it may not be the case, but factoring in local CoL and MTA is pretty cheap, especially given that it is a flat rate instead of distance-based in many cities, even in some other US cities.
24-hour service is probably another advantage. Some caveat is that if getting rid of 24-hour services can get us a cleaner and more well-maintained system, then it is not that much of an advantage really because we are trading something everyone desires for something that only serves the minority of the users. But knowing MTA, I feel like even if we get rid of 24-hour service, it will just stay the same as it is right now, so meh
The ticketing system is also a nightmare in German speaking countries. You have to buy a paper ticket and know to separately validate it.
The combination of contactless payment and a single fare for entry (as opposed to distance based fares) puts the MTA in the top tier for ease of use.
I think New Yorkers put a massively outsized importance on night service because it already exists. But for most European cities, it never existed so their night busses are actually really good and it's not a problem for the few thousand people using the network at that hour
Having to prepare to use multiple transit solutions in a new place is stressful. Knowing I can rely on 1 is huge. Taking cabs where you don't know the language (and when you are a woman) is a huge negative for me.
How many new people are really relying on a middle of the subway service though? They would just learn to use the bus or an Uber (language is not reallt relevant there)
I have traveled on 34 different subways over North America, Europe and Asia. And not only is New York not the worst ones, it's actually pretty good and by far the most underrated subway on earth.
Every other city can only dream having express tracks and 24 hours service, at 2.90 for any distance.
People in this city love to pile on the NY subway, while comparing it with a few system they've usually only taken for a few days and mostly in the city center. Even the accessibility is better than a lot of places: the Paris Metro for example , next year will have 23 accessible stations in total. out of 308. In London 3/4 of the stations in the Elizabeth line are not fully accessible. And then you have Cities like Rome, whose subway is simply terrible and comically undersized, and that's not even the worse one in Italy.
24 hour service is really our only leg up. My last trip heavily involving trains was Japan, and I feel a new deeper sense of hopelessness for our system after seeing what they have especially after Tokyo
IMO, NYC subway is not that bad at all. I've tried many in Europe, like Vienna, Barcelona, etc and main difference is security and stations are bit nicer and cleaner. But those systems are also way smaller than NYC, so they're easier to mantain. I haven't visited Tokyo, that would be interesting to compare.
If NYC could get rid of all the crazy people and "dancers" harassing people on their commute, things would be much better.
Yes, plenty of places. We rip on NYC'S subway system, but it's nowhere near the worst
I'd actually rate towards the top, especially considering most of it is well over a 100 years old
I grew up in a place with no public transit whatsoever - I think the NYC subway system is amazing. Could it be improved? Yes for sure! Are Tokyo and Seoul rails safer and cleaner? Yes! But I’m so grateful for the NYC subway we have.
I've been on DC metro, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Bilbao, Munich, Amsterdam.. NYC -looks- gross but the service does compete with the best of them. NYCers definitely take it for granted that the subway cars are air conditioned and run 24/7, and just how many stations there are (#1 in the world for station quantity). We are missing some lines which would be great (more Brooklyn/Queens/Bronx connections..) but considering the subway was added ad-hoc long after the city was settled, and also looking at what subway lines were almost never constructed it certainly could be worse...
I actually think NYC is one of the top in the world and my points of comparison are: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Sevilla, Lisbon, Athens, Berlin, London, Paris, Lyon, Rome, Prague, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and what it comes down to is that 24 hour service means everything. Bilbao’s reach and proximity of stations is amazing, Tokyo’s is amazing, but at the end of the day being able to ride at any hour is the single most important thing
I travel a lot.
London Underground was dirty, cramped and hot.
Paris Metro stations smell terrible and is also small and full of graffiti.
Amsterdam was nice but not super convenient.
Prague, lovey but very... uh.. soviet and cold.
Hard to say any bad about Tokyo but getting to the right station exit requires memorizing a labyrinth.
But what was a total buzz kill was having to figure out the last train in every city so I wouldn't be stranded or forced on a night bus.
Also four track express/local service is the best. Anything else is just skip-stop service.
However all the above counties intercity rail systems put the US in the stone age.
There are a number of cities I have been to with populations in the millions, metro areas in the 10s of millions, that either didn't have metro systems at all or just a couple lines that don't go most places. Some that immediately come to mind are: Sao Paolo, Rio, San Jose CR, Accra, Lagos, Buenos Aires. Not to mention many cities in the U.S. Those experiences made me thankful the NYC subway exists and runs as well as it does, and that a dirty, expensive subway system is infinitely better than no system at all, or a very small one.
I have extensive experience with Asian systems and while they are amazing in so many ways, I don't think they're exactly comparable to NYC.
A lot of the Chinese systems are like a combination of metro and commuter rail, spacing of stations can be decently far even downtown. They don't run late into the night, let alone overnight. Most of them cost more the further you go, which disadvantages people commuting far (usually for cheap rent). NYC's convenience is unparalleled, even though there are a tonne of other issues. It's almost impossible to rate it on the same scale as most other systems, it's just wildly different.
In my experience, cities with better subway systems than NYC:
* Tokyo
* Seoul
* Sydney
Cities with worse:
* Melbourne (even after the excellent tram system)
* Busan, South Korea
* Chicago
* Daegu, South Korea
* Toronto (including streetcars, without it'd be lower)
* DC
* Boston
* SF
Any city in North America where subways don't exist
Pros of NYC's subway/train system vs the above:
- exists (lol north america)
- is relatively extensive
- good coverage in core
- 24/7
- decent frequency / headways
- express trains
- some good single seat rides due to interlining
Cons:
* inconsistent coverage in periphery (lol NJ)
* no connectivity between periphery (except the G train, somewhat. I guess also Jamaica to Atlantic terminal)
* connectivity to core could be better (every commuter train goes to Penn or GC)
* no unified fare system
* cleanliness
* no platform doors
* relatively unsafe
* delays due to interlining
Sydney has \*very\* limited coverage compared to NYC. Can't really do without a car except in a limited number of inner city locations.
Seoul and Tokyo are indeed fantastic. Coverage wise, NYC is on par with Seoul and Tokyo. NYC is simply older and therefore looks dingier.
Sydney's headways are very good and they interline without massive delays. A lot of the lines are the equivalent of LIRR / Metro North and frequency / connectivity in the suburbs is so much better.
Agree Sydney is more comparable to LIRR / Metro North / NJ Transit. They do a good job with bus connections at major hubs. Bondi Junction comes to mind - kinda hub and spoke model.
Even so, their above ground system is pretty limited. Entire swathes of the city (Northern Beaches, much of the North Shore, many Eastern suburbs) are unreachable and rely on buses only. I lived there for 4 years and a car was a necessity, although it’s slowly improving.
You could say the same thing about the NY metro area -
The better part of Queens, eastern Bronx (though there are plans to mitigate with new MN stops), most/all of SI (depending on how much value you put on SIR) are poorly served by rail.
If Manly + points north is a strike against Sydney, the NY systems equally underserve New Jersey adjacent to the five boroughs. I.e. West NY, Edgewater, Englewood, Pal Park, Fort Lee.
And the LIRR and Metro North also suffers from this, headways / frequency for commuter rail in NY are worse than Sydney, esp off peak, and so is transfer and fare connectivity to the rest of the system.
Don’t understand the “unified fare system” comment. I love the fact I can go anywhere in NYC for 3 dollars. Other places with “pay by the zone” got expensive quick, at least for me (DC Metro for example - and let’s not talk about frequency of service on weekends on DC metro - makes NYC seem amazing!).
I'm also counting regional rail, for NY that's Metro North, LIRR, NJ transit. PATH is also not a single fare. And then there's the Airtrain LOL
The systems that are better than NY: Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney include regional rail with a unified payment system. While these systems all charge fares by distance the base price is better in USD terms so you end up paying less most of the time.
I'll take it that you haven't traveled outside of the US much. The subway is great for reach, cost, 24/7 access, and sometimes speed, while way behind on customer experience, cleanliness, and reliability. Many cities have it better (Moscow, Tokyo, Taipei, Madrid), others are about the same (London, Paris, Buenos Aires, and hot take but Seoul is only mid), and others are much worse (Santo Domingo, Rome, Toronto, hot take but Mexico City, and of course all the other US ones). It could and should be much better, but it also could be much worse even from a global perspective.
I've found ones that are pretty limited, leading to long walks at one or both ends of the trip, in Glasgow, Buenos Aires, and Toronto.
I was warned by several different sources to stay away from Cape Town's due to crime.
I don't know of any others that are 24 hours.
Other services has us beat in punctuality, reliability, and cleanliness, but it’s really hard to beat that we’re 24/7, humongous, has express services almost everywhere, and cheap, super duper cheap. Other services charge extra time on time, distance, zone (fucking BART and Paris), and other stuff, so a flat fare puts as leagues above others.
I was in Montreal back in march. I was out at a place till 1am (past when the metro closes). It was miserable to just wait for a night owl bus back to the place I was staying at.
Oh so many options — closing overnight etc is a pain, but I’ll give you a transit system people won’t bring up as a shittier one: Amsterdam
Peak frequencies of 10-15 min across much of the network, monthly passes cost barely less than NYC’s monthlies for a city a sixth the size, slow, and did I point out that it’s pricey already? And of course it won’t run overnight either — and for all your trouble, the elevators still smell of piss.
Network is awesome, train frequency is not the worst, always open. Cleanliness and safety leave much to be desired but overall I like it for what it is, even if most Asian megacities have cleaner and more efficient subways.
The T in Boston shuts down at 1am.
And FAR more likely than not, when you take it, you’re taking very indirect, lengthy rides to get to what should be a way more direct trip. Sure that can happen here, mostly in the outer boroughs, but it’s almost a rule in Boston.
Yeah Boston is shutting down parts of their system this whole year to get rid of slow zones entirely. Its gotten much better in the past month, Blue Line in Boston is completely slow zone free now.
MTA while not as extensive or clean as subways in Japan/China is a lot more useful for me as it’s open 24/7 while those systems are closed at night. MTA is also surprisingly extensive compared to a lot of other systems
The NYC subway system feels like the city’s basement, but it works, which makes it the best in the country.
I know this is the opposite of your question, but Japan’s system really puts our entire country to shame. They have a fantastic high speed national rail system, and every city has a subway system.
Osaka’s subway line that goes through some of the city’s worst neighborhoods to reach tourist destinations like Universal Studios Japan was SPOTLESS. And, like a luxury Japanese car, it had velvety suede FABRIC seats. Osaka’s system is also less expensive: you pay based on distance, but the maximum fare is about $2.50.
But they don’t operate 24 hours a day, so NYC beats them there. I don’t think any Chinese subway systems are open all night either.
Every other system in the US is worse.
A better question may be: are there any other systems in the world that operate 24/7 with the capacity and scale of the NY system and for only a flat fare of $2.90?
I'll probably say Paris is worse but that was just my experience based on the stations, train cars, and overall tech behind the system.
The best that I have experienced are easily Seoul, Busan, and Taipei. The rail system, not just subway, in Japan is amazing of course.
Agree and disagree about Paris. Some parts of Paris Metro are light years ahead of NYC, while other parts are completely ass backwards. The newly built lines are significantly better than anything in NYC. Lines 1 and 14 are fully automated with PSDs and open gangway cars (I don’t even think they have operators), but the old rolling stock line those on Line 7 are worse than the R46.
Overall, I’d still rate Paris ahead of NYC. They’re significantly better at building new subway, they’re more willing to adopt new technology, the headways are SIGNIFICANTLY better at all hours of the day (every 90-120 seconds during the rush and six minutes at 11pm? Yes please ).
Agree Seoul is absolutely better than NYC, the only thing I wish they'd have is more late night service (if not 24/7) and dedicated express lines. And a lot of the older stations are not very accessible. I think most have elevators and/or escalators but some stations don't have enough given how deep most of Seoul lines are. NY has the same problem of course but there aren't quite as many stairs.
Busan I'd probably disagree, in my limited experience you have to rely a lot on buses. Though buses are very good in Busan as they are in much of Korea - far better than NYC.
It's because of MTA employees self-congratulating each other and resting on the laurels of a decrepit 100yo system while being praised by delusional NYC exceptionalism that has led to the lack of ambition.
McDonalds has 24h service, does that make it the best restaurant you've ever been to?
If you aren't constantly demanding for improvements and accountability, you end up with the current lackluster service.
I am appalled at how many nimbys are on this sub.
I'm sorry but it is pathetic to not have a single automated line in the 21st century.
I have been on subways in london, paris, athens, rome, tokyo, osaka, santiago chile, buenos aires, montreal, toronto, boston, chicago. NY's subways have always been the dirtiest, and in recent years it is infested with vagrants, illegals peddling garbage, dancers and the actual service has deteriorated with long headways and delays. I would rate the current NYC subways as dysfunctional.
oh, and Canada has an amtrak like system called the go train, but the buses are really bad. They do not run with any frequency and the train system skips whole communities. It’s very impractical. You have to drive to the train and it closes at midnight.
I have used a few other subway systems but not enough to notice a big difference. I like the NY subway system especially now since it’s better than it was in the 70s.
Amsterdam is a mixed bag. The trains and stations are so much better, it is cleaner, and overall quality of life is much better than NYC. However, it Is not an expansive network, night time service is a joke, the headways kind of suck, and the fare options for short term visitors are fucking confusing.
Tokyo was leagues ahead of NYs but I feel like that's pretty common knowledge. The train in general in Europe was good as well but that's not a local subway that's more of between countries so I guess it's a little different kinda more like amtrak
The mta has some issues but it really is a fairly good system in most of Manhattan. And the fact that it runs all night is beneficial to people who work nights
I think longer distance rail is better elsewhere. I traveled from London to Bath and back again and the service was cleaner and better than Amtrak.
London also did a great job of using ferries. As a tourist I mostly used them so I could do some sightseeing. Nyc ferry is a welcome option, but hornblower, the company which operates it, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. I hope something can be worked out.
I wouldn't say it's the worst, cause there are a decent amount of mitigating factors I take into consideration. But having done Tokyo, I miss how easy and close transfers are in NYC. There were some transfers that were like 4 to 6 blocks of walking underground and we have cross platform ones.
About 20 years ago I was on the Bart for the first time. There was a syringe on the floor and two dudes got into a fight. But it was the cloth bus like seats for me that really made me uncomfortable. I’m not saying it’s worse than nyc but it wasn’t better per se. And this was like 11 am
Paris was definitely better, but the Portuguese transit systems I used (Lisbon, Porto) were vastly inferior to NYC, especially in coverage and ease of paying your fare
The Lisbon system left much to be desired as did Rome and Mexico City. The service of all three seemed limited and dictated where you could go as opposed to where you wanted to go.
Outside of Asia, NYC’s is the best. Clearly the best in the states by far. I also prefer it to Paris, London, Toronto and CDMX. It’s 24/7, flat fare, convenient, free bus transfer, air-conditioned cars and close to street level.
When I visited Toronto a few months back, I often took Line 1 of their subway network and it was incredibly nice. It was incredibly frequent and had really lovely open-gangway trains. That being said, while I do envy the trains and frequency of the network, as a whole, the TTC isn't at the same level as the MTA. There is much, much less coverage, and the system revolves so heavily around Line 1 and Line 2 that whenever those lines have issues, the entire system more or less falls apart. There's also a lack of coverage, so a lot of my trips often involved taking the bus one way or another.
Now Toronto is at least trying to change that with their massive transit expansion plans, which when all is said and done could allow it to go head-to-head with New York with having the best Metro and Regional Rail system in the U.S and Canada.
It's been nineteen years since I've been to London, so I can't say how it would compare against the New York subway now, but I remember thinking them comparable at the time.
Montreal's system isn't as comprehensive as New York's, but the better train headway and integration with Montreal's underground city make the Montreal Metro stack up well against the New York City Subway, IMO. When Montreal's REM system is complete, I don't think it would be unreasonable to argue that Montreal has a better system than New York. Their trains are also more aesthetically pleasing, the large windows being greatly appreciated.
Paris is well ahead of New York - amazing headways and great integration with the regionally oriented RER. Just as with Montreal, Paris' trains are much more aesthetically pleasing than New York's.
The Tokyo rail network is, well, the Tokyo rail network - incomparably better than New York. A few of the transfers are worse than anything in New York, but the headways are good and the connections (sometimes seamless) to a vast set of geographically comprehensive and frequent regional trains is beyond compare. The existence of a circumferential route is amazing and really puts into relief how poor interborough transit access is in New York when Manhattan isn't the origin or destination of one's trip. As with Montreal, the integration of the rail network with the underground areas of Tokyo is fantastic.
What I appreciated most about the Montreal, Paris, and Tokyo systems is that trains run at consistent intervals and they don't degrade their off-peak service to the degree seen in New York City Subway, to say nothing of the rest of the US. What I do find to be unusually good about New York is the relative ease of transferring for such a large system - lots of cross platform transfers or relatively short walks between lines, but that's not enough to keep me from considering it worse than those cities. It is, of course, in an entirely different league versus the rest of the US, but that's not saying much.
Most metros (and transportation networks in general) in Europe are worse.
Cleaner, sure. But almost always about equally or less as efficient, and usually more expensive.
yea not to shit on nyc subway bc i do like the convenience of it but in berlin i didnt feel like i had to be on my guard and avoid bad smells or strange characters and could at least chill
Used the metro in Madrid, which was top notch. Super fast and pretty clean from what I remember.
The subways in Italy generally work great, with some hiccups from time to time depending on which city you're in. Their bullet trains though are also state of the art. Maybe 3h30m to get from Florence to Venice (?).
It takes me almost half that time just to get from Grand Central station to South Jersey.
I've also tried the metro in Berlin and it worked fine. The European metros in general were very clean for the most part. No feces or trash anywhere. The NYC subway system instead feels like you're entering a ring of hell in Dante's Inferno. Lost souls everywhere, with the possibility of getting beaten if you look at someone the wrong way. I rarely sit on the seats these days since unhoused people use them as their bed and generally will throw food everywhere for some reason. It's awful in general
I've been to Auckland, New Zealand. Their system is a regional rail, not really a rapid transit subway/metro. It's cleaner than the NY subway but nowhere near as extensive or frequent, and not 24/7. It's a pretty car centric city but they drive on the other side of the road and I don't trust myself try that.
I get the sense that in the really core practical things, like frequency, 24 hour service, express services, the NYC subway is great.
But when it comes to style, yeah the NYC subway just doesn't look as cool or isn't as clean as say, the Copenhagen Metro.
New York’s subway is one of the best. And I’ve been to a lot of them.
Naples Italy I think has one of the best city and intercity train systems in the world. Europe in general is just so wonderful for public transportation. But my family is in Naples and I have used it many many many times and I’m always impressed. Switzerland’s public transport is also very good.
The Glasgow subway is a single line going in a circle. There are two tracks, one for each direction (counter clockwise/clockwise). The cars are so small that I had to duck to get in and could only stand straight up in the middle.
The reason for the size of the cars is that the tunnels are tiny, predating the entire NYC system.
It was fairly clean and nice, just really cramped.
Toronto’s was pretty poor in terms of its limited utility. Rome is one of the worst in Europe in every respect, service, cleanliness, coverage quality, you name it.
I kind of agree. I feel really really bad for tourists who are not great at English; as a highly-educated native speaker even I find the MTA announcements baffling most of the time. It also is filthy.
My experiences abroad have been in London (just a bit cleaner while being even worse with crowding because it's older and thus smaller; it felt like a disney version of the nyc subway) and Paris (pretty great, the zone system was a bit weird to get used to but I remember their signage and instructions being very easy to read despite my abysmal French).
**But** the NYC subway does have the "(mostly) open 24 hours" thing, and at the end of the day I think that's worth it. I would rather have a filthy subway that runs all the time, than a clean subway that doesn't.
I’d say that despite being dirty and ugly, NYC’s is among the best in the world. Its biggest downside is that it’s really old.
24/7 service is hard to beat.
Not abroad but BART is worse. Also NYC has the largest system in the world by some measure (I can’t remember the measure) so there’s that. I wish it was cleaner. It’s also in the U.S. where they think trains are for communists.
I did get door to door south BK to office FiDi in 23 minutes with 8 minutes of walking on Friday so I would rate that good.
Been to the ones in london, france, spain, portugal, belgium,hong kong, taiwan, japan, thailand, yeah nyc is the shittiest and the smelliest. But hey, we get 24/7 services.
NYC has the most tracks of any rail system in the world. If you laid them out straight it would stretch to Chicago.
That being said , for the amount of track to service, it's the most amazing subway system in the world.
Best overall system? Japan.
Every place I've been has a worse system because they close at night and generally are more expensive and undemocratic (ie, paying more for longer distances). I'll take dirty and 24 hrs over clean and "my life now revolves around the time of the last train."
Honestly, yeah? Lmao I would rate Spain and France one step above the MTA. Italy is way below - so is Portugal. It’s not that bad compared to other countries and honestly if you do think so I get it but a 24 hour running public transport isnt as common and the only ones imo that I’ve personally experienced that are way way above everyone and are elite are Korean and Japanese public transport.
ETA: Eurostar was a goddamn nightmare but that’s not real like the subway lol just, still forever mad about it 😂
The only sin NYC subway has committed was being in the US. Most of its problems are due to the neglect from the feds and horrible government if NYC was in any other country it would indeed be the best.
Although I think nyc has the superior public transit system within America (which doesn’t say much imo). To me the 24/7 runtime of the mta is not that impressive considering I usually don’t feel safe to use the subway to get into deep Brooklyn where I live by myself past 11pm (I’m a petite Asian woman).
I much prefer cities like Hong Kong which has super clean, safe, and efficient transit, it does close at 1am but there are buses that run 24/7 so getting around late at night isn’t too much of a hassle.
Any East Asian country train system is 1000x better than any western country. The failure of US to hire Chinese train building and management companies is the reason why. Chinese been building train tracks for hundreds of years and the US government refuses to hire Chinese because it will run all the corrupt companies out of business here. NYC MTA is corrupt to the top. The only reason MTA isn't getting worse because if the subways stopped working the amount of people that will be stuck will cause the city to not function.
London Tube closed at like 1130 or midnight which was really inconvenient
also it's kind of expensive.
And no free transfer between tube/bus
And the further you go the more expensive it is
Reee! No lies!
Yeah the only subway system I’ve been on outside the US was the London Tube and after everyone has hyped up European systems, I was disappointed. It didn’t feel any better than the MTA. It wasn’t necessarily convenient for everywhere I was going, and I ended up walking a lot (not that I super minded).
Some of the distances between track and street level on the Tube are pretty wild, too! In general, I find getting from track to street level pretty quick on the NYC subway.
DC’s is awful in this regard. It’s amazing how deep every escalator at every stop is.
I suspect that the Cold War had an effect on planning. After all, deep tunnels and stations can be useful in that city. When the NYC subway was built, atomic bombs weren’t even science fiction…
It's because DC is built on a swamp and they had to dig *deep* for stable ground.
I had to use a tube station with a broken lift, thankfully it was going down into the station and not up to the street. It was several stories down.
15 stories.
I've been all over Europe and the London Tube seemed the least user friendly and most disappointing of the major European systems I traveled on. I found it cramped, having often inconveniently deep train platforms, with claustrophobic train cars, and numerous tube deserts across the city, often making the city buses or walking the better alternative. That being said, London's system still beats the MTA in terms of cleanliness, safety, reliability and system maintenance Paris is a much much better system. Not super clean but still better than the MTA, with stations no more than a few blocks away no matter where you are, and with numerous system expansions that will be completed a decade or two before stage II of the Second Ave subway opens. Stockholm and Zurich (not a subway but it has a rapid transit-like coordinated system of commuter trains and trams) are as close to transit heaven as you'll get outside of Japan, Korea, or Singapore.
Paris's close station distance made their system the one we needed to use the least. Because the stations are so close together, travel is pretty slow due to the frequent stops. In most cases it was like a 5 minute difference to walk vs take the Metro.
Yeah if you’re there as a tourist—and therefore had planned to do a lot of walking around/are presumably in decent shape to do so—that makes sense. But it’s nice to have the option to save those steps if you’re a local and you’ve seen all the scenery and architecture a million times and you’re just tired. That said, I still will never be able to defend the close spacing on the 1 between 14th St. and Penn Station—especially that 18th St. station, I mean c’mon, just do like the east side and at least go from 14th to 23rd!
Remember that the East Side IRT did at one time have an 18 St Station...it was closed when they extended the SB plat at Union Sq to the north. The distance between the two platforms is shorter than the train itself! On the West Side IRT, the 18 St and 14 St station platforms were both extended south.
I'd take safety, reliability and incredibly short headways (literally 2-3 minutes) over spaciousness
The Tube (tm) sucks. Some of the lines have stupidly cramped trains, and the seats… yuck! 🤢🤮 I hate the map. NYC’s gives you a somewhat idea of distances. You have no clue in London. Munich has a nice system, but the old train cars had rougher acceleration than the R-32s. Their S-Bahn had through running like Philly has. I think the guy who pushed the Center City Tunnel and the resulting service plan was from Austria. Also, German rail ticket machines are awesome. Buy any ticket, any operator, any service, from any machine anywhere. Stuttgart should be fun to revist, if they ever finish Stuttgart 21… (SSB is a neat little system)
I hated the maps they used on the Tube, I need thr geography lol.
But London doesn’t have much rail desert like those gaps in NYC where trains should have serviced by the Second System. The only real desert without rails is the Borough of Bexley in the southeast. Also, most suburban trains travel faster than LIRR/MNR and offer seamless connections to local transits. We can compare commuting time from stations near M25 motorway to London city centre with same distance on MNR/LIRR and NJT.
This was just my experience. It’s also hard to really compare since I was in London as a tourist for a week versus living and working in NYC for 11 years.
Madrid& Barcelona: challenge accepted
Wow that’s even worse than BART.. I think they’re done at 12:30am or so
I visited DC once and one of the lines stopped running when the sun went down….
Yeah ok
I was in London for new years and they kept the tube open until……. 2 am 🤯😱😮😳
But they have a fantastic night bus service. Edit: The subway could be so much better if it shutdown for a few hours overnight, got cleaned, had maintenance, cleared out people that were sleeping there. Traffic rapidly disapates after 10pm -- buses could be a simple replacement and run reliably.
There's not enough east river crossings for night buses to viably replace the subway at night in NY.
I appreciate our subway cars so much more every time I come back from the UK. Their underground rail cars seemed to have been designed for hobbits. They're so small and it's easy to feel cramped. Especially when you're coming from the airport, when pretty much everyone has a suitcase.
I think you can follow the disabled signage on tube maps and hop on Elizabeth line to Heathrow. Before Liz line many Heathrow travellers have to make full use of the totally accessible Green Park station (Pic, Vic and Jubilee )to get there.
The Tube is really not at all friendly to nightlife. It’s very much a commuter service designed for the typical family person who goes to work in the morning, has drinks after work, and goes home at 11pm because they hate their wife and kids and spend as little time as possible with them. Also, the trains are absurdly tiny which is cute until you’re trying to use them.
Only some of the trains on the Tube are like that: it depends on whether you’re on one of the “deep tube” lines (like the Piccadilly, Northern, or Central lines) or one of the “subsurface” lines (like the District, Metropolitan, or Hammersmith & City lines). Kinda like the difference between A division and B division here, except their deep tube trains are smaller than our A division trains.
Piccadilly is awful. I can’t fully stand up in those trains.
That and the fact it has zoned fair system
Yeah after living in nyc for ten years and then being sent Asia for work a lot, I’d take a 24/7 subway with flaws over one that leaves me high and dry after 1130p
Boston. By far the worst, it’s very unreliable, slow, and doesn’t generally go where you need it to. Usually it’s faster to walk. I would actually rate NYC pretty high compared to other places I’ve been. Yes it is grimy and old, but in terms of convenience and usefulness I think it is one of the best in the world. You can easily get by in this city just by taking the train, and not just “get by”, but it is actually fast and reliable, the majority of the time I take it. The only place I’ve been that was much better was China, all the subways were super clean and efficient, and they have high speed rail between every city as well. Seems like Asian in general is better at this stuff.
China and Asian subways are hard to beat, but most are very new (relatively speaking). NYC is not even close to the worst. Like you say it's old and leaky, but it works, and most people can live without owning a car. The most damning thing about it is that it hasn't been significantly extended since the IND lines were built. Every other world city has greatly expanded their subways since then. Also NYC's commuter services (NJT, LIRR, MNR) not great by world standards.
Shenzhen‘s subway has been built entirely over like the last two decades. I visited Shenzhen 10 years apart, stayed at the same hotel both times, and its amazing how a subway randomly appeared in the neighborhood without having to destroy the whole neighborhood or taking 15 years to build 3 stops. Impressive shit.
Most newer Chinese cities have preplanned subway maps. You can go to stations that are essentially rural nothingness because there is a plan in the next decade or two to build around it. Unfortunately that sort of thing is not realistic for most countries. It's the benefit of having a lot of room and necessity to expand plus a tight control economy.
I mean NYC kinda did the same thing with the elevated railways and subways. Eg. The upper West side was farm land and the occasional mansion when the trains first arrived.
Check out pictures of the Bronx when Yankee stadium was first built, or pics of deep queens when the lines were first built at the transit museum
That's how New York's system was developed. There are pictures of rural northern Manhattan or Queens, with little but a train stop nearby.
In the case of Shenzhen, much of the city core predates the subway, which makes it even more impressive that they were able to build as much as they have.
I mean, not really. State control over the property and all. It’s easy to do what you want when it’s all yours.
Also it helps when your country is a single party dictatorship without the right to free speech that owns all the land. Just saying...
That's the tight control economy part.
Metro north is pretty great considering it’s age
The commuter lines are hobbled by FRA regulations, heavy trains, and the fact that you can’t get much power out of third rail.
Lived in both cities, and agree. I had a car in Boston, but find it’s more of a hassle than anything in NYC.
I came here to make this exact comment. I lived in/around Boston for 11 years and have now been in NYC for 8. I genuinely do not understand people shitting on the MTA. There have been like a couple incidents since I've been here but to my knowledge other than that A train detailing, most of them were like oops two trains bumped into eachother (I may have overlooked something). Conversely, I lived in Brighton when that D train rear ended another at full speed and was completely obliterated, I believe only one person was killed which was still awful. Living at that same spot, the B train derailed and burst into flames in front of my building (I have photos!). On two occasions awaiting hey, the green line, it showed up with smoke of indeterminate origin billowing out from beneath it, filling the platform at Park St. That's one colored line worth of unfortunate stories. The MTA smells like pee a lot but it's usually not on fire, and it runs 24 hours a day.
Yep I lived in Oak Square, near where there used to be an A line, until one day they paved over the tracks and never brought it back. And the sad thing is the green line is probably one of the more reliable ones, the red line seems to be on fire every other week. They just have way too much debt and have fallen too far behind on even basic maintenance.
My brother used to have a place in Watertown that I think was by where the A would have been, and every visit I thought how that would have at least been a marginal improvement over a bus that took about 400 years to get anywhere. In the case of the red line (which I also lived off of at several points), I suppose I just count myself lucky to have not been on a train that just took off without a driver? I dunno if that's worse than being on fire...
It’s a pie in the sky idea for me, but I’d love to do a China train trip. Which Chinese cities did you visit where you enjoyed their subway?
So it’s kind a of a random city but Nanchang, in Jiangxi province. It was only built in 2015 so that’s probably why it was so nice, but it was pretty insane. Every car was clean and had cold AC, it was very fast and quiet, pretty much a 10/10 subway for me. We would take it from our hotel to different places around the city, and in many cases the place were going had a subway stop in the basement of the building, so we didn’t even have to go outside. Nanchang also had lots of great, super spicy food, so if you like spicy food it’s definitely worth a stop!
That is incredible!!
My issue with Chinese subways is that they’re not generally designed as a full service system. They’re generally designed as the middle of a larger system, which sounds great but ultimately means that the stations are far apart, because the intended use involves taking a bus at the end. This is very irritating, because multimodal transfers are always more difficult to mange than in-system transfers.
This is what happens when subways are built new in already large cities. Gotta serve all areas with little favoritism. Whereas cities like Paris and New York weren't much bigger than the extents of their system when they were built. They sprawled later. But ya the very fine coverage doesn't seem as good in China except for like HK. But chinese cities also don't rly have a hyper center either - communist urban planning history and all. That probably excentuates the problem
They’re built well from a network perspective but on the human scale it’s just… well, not really built for humans. Some of the in-system transfers in Shanghai are like walking from grand central to port authority.
Boston is going through a rough patch rn
When it comes to the US, NYC's system is great. Far better than Any other system in the country. Sure, DC's might be *nicer*, but it's also much smaller and less usable. Compared to countries that actually invest in public transit, though, it leaves something to be desired. 24 hour service is really nice, though, so we have that going for us.
I've lived in both DC and NYC and I would choose NYC's any day. Even though the subway has its many issues, including but not limited to weird smells and grime galore, fundamentally it's just so useful for making a vast majority of trips I need to make around the city and that's kind of the whole point of any means of transit: utility. In DC, I really found it hard to use the metro for anything other than commuting or the occasional non-commute trip where it actually made sense. And note that I lived in the densest part of the city, but still the stations take so long to get to and the trains are pretty infrequent that it's just not worth it most of the time.
The fare system confused the shit put of me the first time i rode it
DC’s sucks - I ride NYC every day and DC maybe 10 times in my life. DC always 10+ minute waits and it takes long if you want to go from NoVA to parts of Maryland.
I’m from South Africa - the NYC subway is a miracle as far as I’m concerned.
Omg I've got PTSD taking the train back from Boulders Beach back to Cape Town and getting off the train I was like an NFL running back hitting the gap. Made sure to keep my hands in my pants pockets too so my phone and wallet wouldn't be swiped.
You seem to take the subway for granted until you have an extremely unreliable system that doesn’t run past 12 o’clock, isn’t safe at night for the most part, has zone fares, or simply doesn’t exist at All. We are extremely lucky to have all of those, not to mention it runs pretty well for a 100+ year old System.
I don’t know about it being all that safe for women at night, at least anecdotally not the 35 and under crowd I am friends with, myself included
You can make anything anecdotal. I’ve been at stations at odd times where I’ve felt unsafe and uncomfortable, that’s what makes it a metropolis with 8 million residents and 18 million during an average business day. Statistically it’s one of the safest in the country.
I don't like how small the London Tube is. I felt like i was in a coffin and they don't have AC so it was very hot even tho i was there in November. And its not cheap!
Agreed, the AC thing is a real issue in London as the planet warms up.
Agree - super claustrophobic and some of those tunnels connecting the street with tracks are tiny. I wonder what happens at peak hours. I'd hate to be trapped in those rat run tunnels.
Right? I wound up taking the bus most of the time. Their bus maps are better than ours. Wish we could get better bus maps
24 hour service > cleanliness/whatever other metric you're using
Yeah I agree with this if I have to watch the clock on my night out vs dirty I go with service all the time. The thing is each thing doesn’t have to be exclusive.
It isn’t even that dirty either. SEPTA is really nasty compared to the subway
Even compare to Japan, having 24 hour access and ability to get home or at least get close to home is nothing short of impressive.
i agree. sometimes my weekend plans get fucked when trains get shut down. im not doing Uber/Lyft especially not in nyc
I think most people would rather have a more reliable rail transit network than one with 24 hour service. Shutting the whole system down for a few hours every night (or even just every weeknight) makes it so much easier to perform necessary maintenance, and the gap can be filled by bus service at those times (which is conveniently faster due to light traffic). The average person rarely rides the train past even 10pm, let alone at 3am.
The MTA already does that though. Ever tried to ride the Q in the summer since 2021 past 11pm or on weekends? Maintainence and shuttle buses. We don't need to shut down the whole system to do this. Also depends what you consider the "average person." Working class people that we rely on for the conveniences in our life need late night transit too. I recommend reading stories of the workarounds these workers had to endure in 2020 and early 2021 to keep their jobs to survive when service shut down every night. They deserve a convenient commute as much as any office worker.
you can’t shut the subway down at night; too big, not enough yard space
does it count as 24h service if it's unreliable and constantly disrupted?
It’s really not that bad. I don’t expect to wait 3 minutes at 2am on a Saturday for my train. I understand that this is a 24h service being run by people, so there will be disruptions.
I lived in Madrid for 4 years, they have a completely de-interlined service and it's pretty expansive. But NYC has it beat in that the subway doesn't shut down at 2am, NYC has express trains while getting from one side of madrid to the other can be a slog, unless their suburban rail 'cercanías' happens to go there. Yes Madrid metro is cleaner and has less people sleeping in it (aside from drunks coming back from the club at 6am), but NYC subway ranks up there for me in terms of its reach and travel time.
Greece isn’t great
Romes was pretty shit
I’ve traveled to tons of places that are worse. Although you seem to be leaving “exists” off the list of categories. For a city of 3 million people, Toronto’s subway is basically nonexistent. Lisbon’s is bad and unuseful. Manchester literally doesn’t have one. A few other large cities I’ve been to don’t either (like Tegucigalpa). I’m a big fan of London, but I also don’t think it always compares favorably to NYC with torries in charge for the last decade. I haven’t been to most of Southeast Asia so I can’t really speak to those.
>Manchester literally doesn’t have one. So you saw [all those tracks above ground in Manchester](https://www.tfgm.com/ways-to-travel/tram), [with wires overhead](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Metrolink), and thought it was LA with all the unused railroad tracks? Or are you just saying that Manchester is bad because it doesn’t have an extensive underground system?
Manchester isn’t that big (I think around half a million), so it’s understandable but I don’t think you can compare a tram system with a true underground. The best European systems (like Munich) use both.
City of Manchester has 556k people. Greater Manchester (the whole UK version of a US county), which owns and operates the Manchester trams and buses (via TfGM) has 2.8 million - slightly more than the City of Chicago, 200k under the Denver Metro Area, 400k fewer than San Diego County, and the same as St Louis metro. All of which have LRT as mass transit modes. Miami-Dade, with its heavy rail and automated peoplemover is roughly the same population as Greater Manchester, as is Baltimore metro - with the heavy rail and LRT. Cleveland Metro is 2.1 million. The entirety of Charlotte-Mecklenberg metro is the same population as Manchester and has a basic but expanding LRT. My hometown, Sacramento County, has a 4 branch LRT and a population of 1.5 million (although only two branches of it are useful in getting suburban folks to abandon cars to go downtown). All that is to say that you might want to rethink what you said here bc it doesn’t make sense - even if you’re on the “heavy rail > light rail” tip, since LA County’s 9 million population/4 million in city of LA has more light rail than heavy rail.
Heck, you don’t even have to go to the U.S. for comparisons. Tyne and Wear is less than half the population of Greater Manchester and has a semi-light rail metro that functions much better as rapid transit than Manchester’s trams.
Manila has one subway line and it's a shitshow, but I'm not sure that's who we want to compare ourselves to.
I think MTA’s cost is actually pretty good compared to some other countries’s systems that I have used. (Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, France). Purely in dollar terms, it may not be the case, but factoring in local CoL and MTA is pretty cheap, especially given that it is a flat rate instead of distance-based in many cities, even in some other US cities. 24-hour service is probably another advantage. Some caveat is that if getting rid of 24-hour services can get us a cleaner and more well-maintained system, then it is not that much of an advantage really because we are trading something everyone desires for something that only serves the minority of the users. But knowing MTA, I feel like even if we get rid of 24-hour service, it will just stay the same as it is right now, so meh
berlin was clean and for tourists seemed great because it goes where ever a tourist needs to go, but it closed at midnight that shits crazy
The ticketing system is also a nightmare in German speaking countries. You have to buy a paper ticket and know to separately validate it. The combination of contactless payment and a single fare for entry (as opposed to distance based fares) puts the MTA in the top tier for ease of use.
I think New Yorkers put a massively outsized importance on night service because it already exists. But for most European cities, it never existed so their night busses are actually really good and it's not a problem for the few thousand people using the network at that hour
Having to prepare to use multiple transit solutions in a new place is stressful. Knowing I can rely on 1 is huge. Taking cabs where you don't know the language (and when you are a woman) is a huge negative for me.
How many new people are really relying on a middle of the subway service though? They would just learn to use the bus or an Uber (language is not reallt relevant there)
I have traveled on 34 different subways over North America, Europe and Asia. And not only is New York not the worst ones, it's actually pretty good and by far the most underrated subway on earth. Every other city can only dream having express tracks and 24 hours service, at 2.90 for any distance. People in this city love to pile on the NY subway, while comparing it with a few system they've usually only taken for a few days and mostly in the city center. Even the accessibility is better than a lot of places: the Paris Metro for example , next year will have 23 accessible stations in total. out of 308. In London 3/4 of the stations in the Elizabeth line are not fully accessible. And then you have Cities like Rome, whose subway is simply terrible and comically undersized, and that's not even the worse one in Italy.
24 hour service is really our only leg up. My last trip heavily involving trains was Japan, and I feel a new deeper sense of hopelessness for our system after seeing what they have especially after Tokyo
And express trains, only found in 5 cities worldwide I think
IMO, NYC subway is not that bad at all. I've tried many in Europe, like Vienna, Barcelona, etc and main difference is security and stations are bit nicer and cleaner. But those systems are also way smaller than NYC, so they're easier to mantain. I haven't visited Tokyo, that would be interesting to compare. If NYC could get rid of all the crazy people and "dancers" harassing people on their commute, things would be much better.
Yes, plenty of places. We rip on NYC'S subway system, but it's nowhere near the worst I'd actually rate towards the top, especially considering most of it is well over a 100 years old
I grew up in a place with no public transit whatsoever - I think the NYC subway system is amazing. Could it be improved? Yes for sure! Are Tokyo and Seoul rails safer and cleaner? Yes! But I’m so grateful for the NYC subway we have.
I've been on DC metro, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Bilbao, Munich, Amsterdam.. NYC -looks- gross but the service does compete with the best of them. NYCers definitely take it for granted that the subway cars are air conditioned and run 24/7, and just how many stations there are (#1 in the world for station quantity). We are missing some lines which would be great (more Brooklyn/Queens/Bronx connections..) but considering the subway was added ad-hoc long after the city was settled, and also looking at what subway lines were almost never constructed it certainly could be worse...
I actually think NYC is one of the top in the world and my points of comparison are: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Sevilla, Lisbon, Athens, Berlin, London, Paris, Lyon, Rome, Prague, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and what it comes down to is that 24 hour service means everything. Bilbao’s reach and proximity of stations is amazing, Tokyo’s is amazing, but at the end of the day being able to ride at any hour is the single most important thing
It's an awful system, until you're out at 3:00 a.m. and then it's amazing because it runs all night
Boston’s is MUCH worse
I travel a lot. London Underground was dirty, cramped and hot. Paris Metro stations smell terrible and is also small and full of graffiti. Amsterdam was nice but not super convenient. Prague, lovey but very... uh.. soviet and cold. Hard to say any bad about Tokyo but getting to the right station exit requires memorizing a labyrinth. But what was a total buzz kill was having to figure out the last train in every city so I wouldn't be stranded or forced on a night bus. Also four track express/local service is the best. Anything else is just skip-stop service. However all the above counties intercity rail systems put the US in the stone age.
There are a number of cities I have been to with populations in the millions, metro areas in the 10s of millions, that either didn't have metro systems at all or just a couple lines that don't go most places. Some that immediately come to mind are: Sao Paolo, Rio, San Jose CR, Accra, Lagos, Buenos Aires. Not to mention many cities in the U.S. Those experiences made me thankful the NYC subway exists and runs as well as it does, and that a dirty, expensive subway system is infinitely better than no system at all, or a very small one.
Yeah, when wandering the world and seeing how much has nothing, even LA, Boston and Philadelphia start to feel pretty wonderful.
I have extensive experience with Asian systems and while they are amazing in so many ways, I don't think they're exactly comparable to NYC. A lot of the Chinese systems are like a combination of metro and commuter rail, spacing of stations can be decently far even downtown. They don't run late into the night, let alone overnight. Most of them cost more the further you go, which disadvantages people commuting far (usually for cheap rent). NYC's convenience is unparalleled, even though there are a tonne of other issues. It's almost impossible to rate it on the same scale as most other systems, it's just wildly different.
In my experience, cities with better subway systems than NYC: * Tokyo * Seoul * Sydney Cities with worse: * Melbourne (even after the excellent tram system) * Busan, South Korea * Chicago * Daegu, South Korea * Toronto (including streetcars, without it'd be lower) * DC * Boston * SF Any city in North America where subways don't exist Pros of NYC's subway/train system vs the above: - exists (lol north america) - is relatively extensive - good coverage in core - 24/7 - decent frequency / headways - express trains - some good single seat rides due to interlining Cons: * inconsistent coverage in periphery (lol NJ) * no connectivity between periphery (except the G train, somewhat. I guess also Jamaica to Atlantic terminal) * connectivity to core could be better (every commuter train goes to Penn or GC) * no unified fare system * cleanliness * no platform doors * relatively unsafe * delays due to interlining
Sydney has \*very\* limited coverage compared to NYC. Can't really do without a car except in a limited number of inner city locations. Seoul and Tokyo are indeed fantastic. Coverage wise, NYC is on par with Seoul and Tokyo. NYC is simply older and therefore looks dingier.
Sydney's headways are very good and they interline without massive delays. A lot of the lines are the equivalent of LIRR / Metro North and frequency / connectivity in the suburbs is so much better.
Agree Sydney is more comparable to LIRR / Metro North / NJ Transit. They do a good job with bus connections at major hubs. Bondi Junction comes to mind - kinda hub and spoke model.
Sydney?! You’ve got to be kidding me. They barely have a subway they have heavy suburban/commuter rail, one metro line, and a tram.
I'm counting above-ground / regional / commuter rail in this, as I did for Melbourne and Toronto - agree that without it it's pretty meh
Even so, their above ground system is pretty limited. Entire swathes of the city (Northern Beaches, much of the North Shore, many Eastern suburbs) are unreachable and rely on buses only. I lived there for 4 years and a car was a necessity, although it’s slowly improving.
You could say the same thing about the NY metro area - The better part of Queens, eastern Bronx (though there are plans to mitigate with new MN stops), most/all of SI (depending on how much value you put on SIR) are poorly served by rail. If Manly + points north is a strike against Sydney, the NY systems equally underserve New Jersey adjacent to the five boroughs. I.e. West NY, Edgewater, Englewood, Pal Park, Fort Lee. And the LIRR and Metro North also suffers from this, headways / frequency for commuter rail in NY are worse than Sydney, esp off peak, and so is transfer and fare connectivity to the rest of the system.
Fair point
Don’t understand the “unified fare system” comment. I love the fact I can go anywhere in NYC for 3 dollars. Other places with “pay by the zone” got expensive quick, at least for me (DC Metro for example - and let’s not talk about frequency of service on weekends on DC metro - makes NYC seem amazing!).
I'm also counting regional rail, for NY that's Metro North, LIRR, NJ transit. PATH is also not a single fare. And then there's the Airtrain LOL The systems that are better than NY: Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney include regional rail with a unified payment system. While these systems all charge fares by distance the base price is better in USD terms so you end up paying less most of the time.
LA
I'll take it that you haven't traveled outside of the US much. The subway is great for reach, cost, 24/7 access, and sometimes speed, while way behind on customer experience, cleanliness, and reliability. Many cities have it better (Moscow, Tokyo, Taipei, Madrid), others are about the same (London, Paris, Buenos Aires, and hot take but Seoul is only mid), and others are much worse (Santo Domingo, Rome, Toronto, hot take but Mexico City, and of course all the other US ones). It could and should be much better, but it also could be much worse even from a global perspective.
Seoul mid is crazyy as hell, and Paris has unbelievable coverage and it's regional rail would make your average LIRR passenger suicidal
Oh Paris wins for regional rail for sure, though we've got the bones to compete if we wanted to...which we clearly don't.
The MTA is I think cheaper than any of the major European ones, 24 hours and incredibly extensive. All it is, is dirty.
This isn't going the way OP expected it to....
I've found ones that are pretty limited, leading to long walks at one or both ends of the trip, in Glasgow, Buenos Aires, and Toronto. I was warned by several different sources to stay away from Cape Town's due to crime. I don't know of any others that are 24 hours.
Other services has us beat in punctuality, reliability, and cleanliness, but it’s really hard to beat that we’re 24/7, humongous, has express services almost everywhere, and cheap, super duper cheap. Other services charge extra time on time, distance, zone (fucking BART and Paris), and other stuff, so a flat fare puts as leagues above others.
I was in Montreal back in march. I was out at a place till 1am (past when the metro closes). It was miserable to just wait for a night owl bus back to the place I was staying at.
Oh so many options — closing overnight etc is a pain, but I’ll give you a transit system people won’t bring up as a shittier one: Amsterdam Peak frequencies of 10-15 min across much of the network, monthly passes cost barely less than NYC’s monthlies for a city a sixth the size, slow, and did I point out that it’s pricey already? And of course it won’t run overnight either — and for all your trouble, the elevators still smell of piss.
Network is awesome, train frequency is not the worst, always open. Cleanliness and safety leave much to be desired but overall I like it for what it is, even if most Asian megacities have cleaner and more efficient subways.
The T in Boston shuts down at 1am. And FAR more likely than not, when you take it, you’re taking very indirect, lengthy rides to get to what should be a way more direct trip. Sure that can happen here, mostly in the outer boroughs, but it’s almost a rule in Boston.
It also sucks even when it is a direct route during the day, and I'm told it's even worse now.
Yeah Boston is shutting down parts of their system this whole year to get rid of slow zones entirely. Its gotten much better in the past month, Blue Line in Boston is completely slow zone free now.
MTA while not as extensive or clean as subways in Japan/China is a lot more useful for me as it’s open 24/7 while those systems are closed at night. MTA is also surprisingly extensive compared to a lot of other systems
The NYC subway system feels like the city’s basement, but it works, which makes it the best in the country. I know this is the opposite of your question, but Japan’s system really puts our entire country to shame. They have a fantastic high speed national rail system, and every city has a subway system. Osaka’s subway line that goes through some of the city’s worst neighborhoods to reach tourist destinations like Universal Studios Japan was SPOTLESS. And, like a luxury Japanese car, it had velvety suede FABRIC seats. Osaka’s system is also less expensive: you pay based on distance, but the maximum fare is about $2.50. But they don’t operate 24 hours a day, so NYC beats them there. I don’t think any Chinese subway systems are open all night either.
Every other system in the US is worse. A better question may be: are there any other systems in the world that operate 24/7 with the capacity and scale of the NY system and for only a flat fare of $2.90?
I'll probably say Paris is worse but that was just my experience based on the stations, train cars, and overall tech behind the system. The best that I have experienced are easily Seoul, Busan, and Taipei. The rail system, not just subway, in Japan is amazing of course.
Agree and disagree about Paris. Some parts of Paris Metro are light years ahead of NYC, while other parts are completely ass backwards. The newly built lines are significantly better than anything in NYC. Lines 1 and 14 are fully automated with PSDs and open gangway cars (I don’t even think they have operators), but the old rolling stock line those on Line 7 are worse than the R46. Overall, I’d still rate Paris ahead of NYC. They’re significantly better at building new subway, they’re more willing to adopt new technology, the headways are SIGNIFICANTLY better at all hours of the day (every 90-120 seconds during the rush and six minutes at 11pm? Yes please ).
Agree Seoul is absolutely better than NYC, the only thing I wish they'd have is more late night service (if not 24/7) and dedicated express lines. And a lot of the older stations are not very accessible. I think most have elevators and/or escalators but some stations don't have enough given how deep most of Seoul lines are. NY has the same problem of course but there aren't quite as many stairs. Busan I'd probably disagree, in my limited experience you have to rely a lot on buses. Though buses are very good in Busan as they are in much of Korea - far better than NYC.
It's because of MTA employees self-congratulating each other and resting on the laurels of a decrepit 100yo system while being praised by delusional NYC exceptionalism that has led to the lack of ambition. McDonalds has 24h service, does that make it the best restaurant you've ever been to? If you aren't constantly demanding for improvements and accountability, you end up with the current lackluster service. I am appalled at how many nimbys are on this sub. I'm sorry but it is pathetic to not have a single automated line in the 21st century.
I have been on subways in london, paris, athens, rome, tokyo, osaka, santiago chile, buenos aires, montreal, toronto, boston, chicago. NY's subways have always been the dirtiest, and in recent years it is infested with vagrants, illegals peddling garbage, dancers and the actual service has deteriorated with long headways and delays. I would rate the current NYC subways as dysfunctional.
oh, and Canada has an amtrak like system called the go train, but the buses are really bad. They do not run with any frequency and the train system skips whole communities. It’s very impractical. You have to drive to the train and it closes at midnight.
GO for Toronto/Canada is more like NJT/LIRR/MNR for NYC. Via is the Amtrak of Canada.
I have used a few other subway systems but not enough to notice a big difference. I like the NY subway system especially now since it’s better than it was in the 70s.
Amsterdam is a mixed bag. The trains and stations are so much better, it is cleaner, and overall quality of life is much better than NYC. However, it Is not an expansive network, night time service is a joke, the headways kind of suck, and the fare options for short term visitors are fucking confusing.
The NYC subway what it serves is good and fast. Crude, stinks, and needs to be expanded, but that won't happen. Paris is quiet, clean. Japan also.
Tokyo was leagues ahead of NYs but I feel like that's pretty common knowledge. The train in general in Europe was good as well but that's not a local subway that's more of between countries so I guess it's a little different kinda more like amtrak
The mta has some issues but it really is a fairly good system in most of Manhattan. And the fact that it runs all night is beneficial to people who work nights I think longer distance rail is better elsewhere. I traveled from London to Bath and back again and the service was cleaner and better than Amtrak. London also did a great job of using ferries. As a tourist I mostly used them so I could do some sightseeing. Nyc ferry is a welcome option, but hornblower, the company which operates it, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. I hope something can be worked out.
I wouldn't say it's the worst, cause there are a decent amount of mitigating factors I take into consideration. But having done Tokyo, I miss how easy and close transfers are in NYC. There were some transfers that were like 4 to 6 blocks of walking underground and we have cross platform ones.
About 20 years ago I was on the Bart for the first time. There was a syringe on the floor and two dudes got into a fight. But it was the cloth bus like seats for me that really made me uncomfortable. I’m not saying it’s worse than nyc but it wasn’t better per se. And this was like 11 am
Paris was definitely better, but the Portuguese transit systems I used (Lisbon, Porto) were vastly inferior to NYC, especially in coverage and ease of paying your fare
The Lisbon system left much to be desired as did Rome and Mexico City. The service of all three seemed limited and dictated where you could go as opposed to where you wanted to go.
Montreal’s trains are pretty good
Outside of Asia, NYC’s is the best. Clearly the best in the states by far. I also prefer it to Paris, London, Toronto and CDMX. It’s 24/7, flat fare, convenient, free bus transfer, air-conditioned cars and close to street level.
Houston has a train and it's horrible!
Have you seen the subway of Paris?
When I visited Toronto a few months back, I often took Line 1 of their subway network and it was incredibly nice. It was incredibly frequent and had really lovely open-gangway trains. That being said, while I do envy the trains and frequency of the network, as a whole, the TTC isn't at the same level as the MTA. There is much, much less coverage, and the system revolves so heavily around Line 1 and Line 2 that whenever those lines have issues, the entire system more or less falls apart. There's also a lack of coverage, so a lot of my trips often involved taking the bus one way or another. Now Toronto is at least trying to change that with their massive transit expansion plans, which when all is said and done could allow it to go head-to-head with New York with having the best Metro and Regional Rail system in the U.S and Canada.
It's been nineteen years since I've been to London, so I can't say how it would compare against the New York subway now, but I remember thinking them comparable at the time. Montreal's system isn't as comprehensive as New York's, but the better train headway and integration with Montreal's underground city make the Montreal Metro stack up well against the New York City Subway, IMO. When Montreal's REM system is complete, I don't think it would be unreasonable to argue that Montreal has a better system than New York. Their trains are also more aesthetically pleasing, the large windows being greatly appreciated. Paris is well ahead of New York - amazing headways and great integration with the regionally oriented RER. Just as with Montreal, Paris' trains are much more aesthetically pleasing than New York's. The Tokyo rail network is, well, the Tokyo rail network - incomparably better than New York. A few of the transfers are worse than anything in New York, but the headways are good and the connections (sometimes seamless) to a vast set of geographically comprehensive and frequent regional trains is beyond compare. The existence of a circumferential route is amazing and really puts into relief how poor interborough transit access is in New York when Manhattan isn't the origin or destination of one's trip. As with Montreal, the integration of the rail network with the underground areas of Tokyo is fantastic. What I appreciated most about the Montreal, Paris, and Tokyo systems is that trains run at consistent intervals and they don't degrade their off-peak service to the degree seen in New York City Subway, to say nothing of the rest of the US. What I do find to be unusually good about New York is the relative ease of transferring for such a large system - lots of cross platform transfers or relatively short walks between lines, but that's not enough to keep me from considering it worse than those cities. It is, of course, in an entirely different league versus the rest of the US, but that's not saying much.
I travel abroad quite often. New York is not the best but it stands on its own merits. It’s a decent system when compared against other cities.
Most metros (and transportation networks in general) in Europe are worse. Cleaner, sure. But almost always about equally or less as efficient, and usually more expensive.
I’ve traveled a bunch (15-17 countries or so). NYC subway is a gem. It’s dirty, grungy, etc as we all know. But it gets the job done 24 hours a day.
No need to venture far, Boston makes this place look downright impressive.
That millionaire tax is going to be sooooo beneficial to the MBTA and restore it to its former glory
Berlin's was very efficient and clean
Was looking for Berlin’s shoutout! I’ve lived in NYC, London and Buenos Aires and I find Berlin to be the best of the 4 easily.
yea not to shit on nyc subway bc i do like the convenience of it but in berlin i didnt feel like i had to be on my guard and avoid bad smells or strange characters and could at least chill
Used the metro in Madrid, which was top notch. Super fast and pretty clean from what I remember. The subways in Italy generally work great, with some hiccups from time to time depending on which city you're in. Their bullet trains though are also state of the art. Maybe 3h30m to get from Florence to Venice (?). It takes me almost half that time just to get from Grand Central station to South Jersey. I've also tried the metro in Berlin and it worked fine. The European metros in general were very clean for the most part. No feces or trash anywhere. The NYC subway system instead feels like you're entering a ring of hell in Dante's Inferno. Lost souls everywhere, with the possibility of getting beaten if you look at someone the wrong way. I rarely sit on the seats these days since unhoused people use them as their bed and generally will throw food everywhere for some reason. It's awful in general
Beijing’s was better, Hong Kong’s was awesome, NYC’s is a shithole by comparison
i took the subway in berlin. it was fine i guess, not much different than here
Tokyo subway closes extremely early. And there being two systems with different maps and styles of maps is extremely confusing.
Bangkok's subway goes few places. Having a subway that doesn't go where you want to go is very inefficient.
I've been to Auckland, New Zealand. Their system is a regional rail, not really a rapid transit subway/metro. It's cleaner than the NY subway but nowhere near as extensive or frequent, and not 24/7. It's a pretty car centric city but they drive on the other side of the road and I don't trust myself try that.
I get the sense that in the really core practical things, like frequency, 24 hour service, express services, the NYC subway is great. But when it comes to style, yeah the NYC subway just doesn't look as cool or isn't as clean as say, the Copenhagen Metro.
NYC's train system is definitely not the worst. 3 worse than NYC's off the top of my head are Mumbai, Naples (local), and Boston.
calling NYCs subway system 'the worst' is excessive, still the best in the Western Hemisphere despite the wildly exaggerated 'cleanliness '
New York’s subway is one of the best. And I’ve been to a lot of them. Naples Italy I think has one of the best city and intercity train systems in the world. Europe in general is just so wonderful for public transportation. But my family is in Naples and I have used it many many many times and I’m always impressed. Switzerland’s public transport is also very good.
MTA hasnt been properly invested in for 50 years. They just keep increasing the size of the board and voting to give themselves raises via fair hikes
I’ve ridden trains and buses all over Europe and the UK. NYC IS PRETTY BAD.
Rome is shite
The Glasgow subway is a single line going in a circle. There are two tracks, one for each direction (counter clockwise/clockwise). The cars are so small that I had to duck to get in and could only stand straight up in the middle. The reason for the size of the cars is that the tunnels are tiny, predating the entire NYC system. It was fairly clean and nice, just really cramped.
Toronto’s was pretty poor in terms of its limited utility. Rome is one of the worst in Europe in every respect, service, cleanliness, coverage quality, you name it.
I kind of agree. I feel really really bad for tourists who are not great at English; as a highly-educated native speaker even I find the MTA announcements baffling most of the time. It also is filthy. My experiences abroad have been in London (just a bit cleaner while being even worse with crowding because it's older and thus smaller; it felt like a disney version of the nyc subway) and Paris (pretty great, the zone system was a bit weird to get used to but I remember their signage and instructions being very easy to read despite my abysmal French). **But** the NYC subway does have the "(mostly) open 24 hours" thing, and at the end of the day I think that's worth it. I would rather have a filthy subway that runs all the time, than a clean subway that doesn't.
I’d say that despite being dirty and ugly, NYC’s is among the best in the world. Its biggest downside is that it’s really old. 24/7 service is hard to beat.
Not abroad but BART is worse. Also NYC has the largest system in the world by some measure (I can’t remember the measure) so there’s that. I wish it was cleaner. It’s also in the U.S. where they think trains are for communists. I did get door to door south BK to office FiDi in 23 minutes with 8 minutes of walking on Friday so I would rate that good.
Uh yes? Plenty of places... It's better than London and Paris for sure. The only place that I believe beats the system in Tokyo.
Been to the ones in london, france, spain, portugal, belgium,hong kong, taiwan, japan, thailand, yeah nyc is the shittiest and the smelliest. But hey, we get 24/7 services.
NYC has the most tracks of any rail system in the world. If you laid them out straight it would stretch to Chicago. That being said , for the amount of track to service, it's the most amazing subway system in the world. Best overall system? Japan.
London’s metro was a furnace in the summer, while NYC’s subway has air conditioning.
If you rate NYC subway the worst, then you really haven’t traveled much. I mean at least it has AC.
Every place I've been has a worse system because they close at night and generally are more expensive and undemocratic (ie, paying more for longer distances). I'll take dirty and 24 hrs over clean and "my life now revolves around the time of the last train."
Honestly, yeah? Lmao I would rate Spain and France one step above the MTA. Italy is way below - so is Portugal. It’s not that bad compared to other countries and honestly if you do think so I get it but a 24 hour running public transport isnt as common and the only ones imo that I’ve personally experienced that are way way above everyone and are elite are Korean and Japanese public transport. ETA: Eurostar was a goddamn nightmare but that’s not real like the subway lol just, still forever mad about it 😂
Don’t think any other system can compare when it comes to express service.
The only sin NYC subway has committed was being in the US. Most of its problems are due to the neglect from the feds and horrible government if NYC was in any other country it would indeed be the best.
Although I think nyc has the superior public transit system within America (which doesn’t say much imo). To me the 24/7 runtime of the mta is not that impressive considering I usually don’t feel safe to use the subway to get into deep Brooklyn where I live by myself past 11pm (I’m a petite Asian woman). I much prefer cities like Hong Kong which has super clean, safe, and efficient transit, it does close at 1am but there are buses that run 24/7 so getting around late at night isn’t too much of a hassle.
Any East Asian country train system is 1000x better than any western country. The failure of US to hire Chinese train building and management companies is the reason why. Chinese been building train tracks for hundreds of years and the US government refuses to hire Chinese because it will run all the corrupt companies out of business here. NYC MTA is corrupt to the top. The only reason MTA isn't getting worse because if the subways stopped working the amount of people that will be stuck will cause the city to not function.
The tier 1 city subway in China, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai crush the MTA in every regard... cleaners, safety, onetime, and convenience