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People are stuck in old modes of thinking about the city. When my parents lived in the city during the 80s, it wasn't safe to take the subway. Everybody owned a car, even in Manhattan. Now, none of my (20-something) friends own cars, but I imagine a lot of older people don't want to give it up.

It does seem pretty nice to drive to work rather than cramming into a subway car for a half hour, even if you're stuck in traffic...

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It's amazing how habit-forming driving seems to be. A friend was recently talking about a colleague of his who lives right next to a tram stop and works right next to another stop on the same tram line. 20 minute tram journey, tram every five minutes at peak time. And instead they drive an hour to work at rush hour, because they're from a rural area and are used to driving. Makes no sense to me at all...

I think you have to live in big city and have taken public transportation on a daily basis, to understand the frustations, the dalays, the insecurity, the smell, the crowdness, and the freedom reducing of it.

If you don't want any of that, ride a bike. Of course all the fools driving in the city center make that a a rather perilous undertaking, which is why congestion charges like these are desperately needed.

I've been taking public transport in a largish city (1.5 million people) for most of my life. I really don't get the problem (except with certain infrequent and unreliable bus routes, but I'd hold that against those routes, not public transport in general). On the other hand, I'd hate to be dependent on a car.

I have been taking public transportation for my commute for the past three years and I never want to go back to driving. The stress reduction of avoiding traffic is immense.

I've been using public transportation every day since I've been 18 (before that, I mostly biked), and I just have to disagree. Transit is so much more freedom than driving or biking for me. I don't have to care about where I park, or the bike getting stolen, or about being stuck in traffic. Whenever I need to get anywhere, I go to the next spot, wait 5min, and just hop onto the next one. It's amazing how much freedom this gives me.

You have to live in a dysfunctional city for that to be a reality. In cities that are functional, you only have to deal with occasional crowding.

NYC, Paris, London, etc.

I drive to work in traffic, and I would much rather be on a subway. Where I live, there is no public transportation from my house to my office. If I could take a subway, I'd be able to zone out, or read a book, or go on Reddit, etc. for 40 minutes instead of being on constant low-level alert while driving.

> zone out, or read a book, or go on Reddit

Kind of? It can get pretty tight to the point where holding a book up is uncomfortable or not possible due to lack of space.

You only get internet at station stops and not in the tunnels, so it's a little bit tough to read Reddit. I usually get around this by pre-loading a bunch of essays I want to read.

Yeah, you can put on your earbuds and zone out. But it's dark down there, and given how short the days are in the winter, it doesn't feel nice to be trapped underground for so long. I'd honestly rather take a reliable bus (as if these even exist) in the morning.

Surprised that NYC doesn't have service in tunnels. CTA has LTE everywhere nowadays. Granted, most of CTA's network is above ground and there are only ~20 miles of underground tracks...

> Surprised that NYC doesn't have service in tunnels.

They don't? Damn, then the internet and telecom and providers in the States are really f*cking their customers up, pardon my French, but that's the gentlest way to put it. Let's say that I can understand that the US is a big country and that you cannot lay fiber over such big of an area as dense as it happens in certain parts of Europe, but to not have metro tunnel coverage for biggest cities in the world is just laughable. The Eastern European capital from where I'm writing this comment has had such a service for at least 5 years, if not more.

> The Eastern European capital from where I'm writing this comment has had such a service for at least 5 years, if not more.

I won't deny that the agency responsible for New York transit is incorrigibly corrupt, along with the New York State government that is ostensibly responsible for holding them accountable.

That said, there is cell service in most stations (I think they finished the rollout recently, so it may be in all stations now). You don't get cell service in all tunnels, but that's because the New York subway system is very old. For comparison, that's the case in London as well: you get cell service in most of the below-ground stations on the Underground, but not necessarily in all of the tunnels.

London will have phone service next year. The previous time public negotiations were discussed, something like 5-8 years ago, the phone companies weren't willing to pay the installation cost Transport for London (i.e. the government) demanded.

I can see the price to install the equipment being very high — confined space, only a few hours overnight in which to work, and many metal-lined tunnels which probably mean a custom solution is necessary.

https://www.ft.com/content/3cead702-4530-11e7-8d27-59b4dd629...

I'm gonna guess you also live in Bucharest. Not really a fair comparison, since our Internet is so absurdly (considering nothing else works properly) amazing [1]. ^_^ Jokes aside, yeah, that's what you get when there's a lot of money at play and a longstanding monopoly [2].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Telephone_Company

Yeah, I think both Orange and Vodafone only started taking tunnel coverage seriously once RCS&RDS started providing free WiFi inside the stations for their residential cable and internet subscribers. Until then doing Internet coverage inside all the tunnels was presented to us, customers, as “too difficult”

I can’t imagine where you came up with that. In 1980, 80% of Manhattan households did NOT own a car. There has never been a time where the statement “everybody owned a car” was remotely true in Manhattan.

Yeah, my parents moved from NYC to Dallas in 1979 (a few years before I was born). Driving everywhere was something they had to get used to. When I was a little kid we took a few trips to NYC to visit extended family, and to prepare me for how different it was I remember my mom telling me that Manhattan may be the only place in the country where most people don't drive anywhere or even own cars. That had to have been in the late '80s, and it was based on memories my mom had of the '70s.

....and pay a 100$ an hour for parking?

A lot of street parking on Manhattan is free, if you know where to look.

As long as you always return to your vehicle on time. Otherwise that free parking turns into a $115 fine followed by a $185 tow plus the $10 Uber ride to get to the NYPD impound lot downtown.

Source: Just got towed. I was fined 15 minutes after I was in violation and towed 5 minutes afterwards.

parking on most streets in NYC, including mine, is free. you would only get towed due to alternate-side parking rules for cleaning. lots of people who don't live anywhere near here (or even in manhattan) take advantage. some building supers actually perform the paid service of parking and retrieving residents' cars in whatever street spots they can find around the city. we need a residential parking permit system to bring control back to neighborhoods and revenue to NYC. the city council has passed this plan but it was killed in Albany because upstate commuters demand free parking in the city.

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