Seoul has a pretty fantastic public transit system. Busses and subways come every 5 to 15 minutes, are clean and fast (you better hold on tight!), and are still expanding year after year to the few underserved areas in Seoul and to the cities surrounded Seoul. There are digital signs giving you the time and location of the coming vehicle, and TVs showing news and entertainment segments. Strong cellular service so you're never without a connection. The busses and subways do stop running around midnight to 1AM, but there is always the choice of taking a taxi, which are also plentiful, fast, and cheap (a ride from the south part of Seoul to the north part is only about $10).

Well, the MTA in New York is certainly stupid and wasteful. But they have slowly started building new lines again (the 7 expansion, the Second Ave subway), so they're not totally short-sighted.

And as much I grumble, NYC is one of the few places in America I feel ok about going all around the city without a car.

I think it's only a hard political problem, but not a hard technical problem at this point.

> What large cities have mass transit that is not astonishingly bad, stupid, and/or short sighted, in your opinion?

I'd guess any European city is better than NYC, which is the best that America has.

It's a hard problem, but BART's issues come down to a bunch of fiefdom infighting among different counties.

Paris and London have pretty fantastic transit.