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Comment by tomjakubowski | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak for Montreal, but there are countless counterexamples of cities in wealthy countries (not as wealthy as the US) where metro users are drawn from more or less every income level. Turns out you can actually make riding a metro into a good experience with a bit of effort.

New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Taipei, London, Berlin, Munich come immediately to mind.

And as sibling commenters have pointed out, in some places even smaller cities and towns have excellent public transit networks that pretty much everyone uses (maybe not always, but when convenient). Freiburg, Germany is one example I've seen.

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Don't know if I'd go so far as to say riding the subway in NYC is "good" experience, but I'll certainly agree that it's one shared by people across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Paris public transit is stellar, fast, easy, relatively clean, and reasonably priced. I never once wished I had a car at my disposal in the city.

Hongkong as well! My god that was some unreal efficiency in subway systems. NYC is a poor mans system in comparison.

In St. Petersburg or Moscow, it feels as natural as walking.

Taipei... yes, absolutely. That was a great experience and easy to use.

NYC... altright, better than 15 years ago but still not great at all. Not as good as Germany or DC.

Tokyo... lol, no! While clean and efficient, it’s a joke that you have different rail stations owned by different companies, different cards that may work on each other but probably not. The ticket machines are almost all cash only. And instructions in other languages might have well used Google translate. Tokyo was one of the more difficult public transport systems I’ve used and I’ve been around the world a bit.

Suica cards work practically everywhere. You can poke a button to use english, usually clearly labeled. You need cash everywhere in Japan so not sure why that surprised you. My experience with Tokyo metro was pretty good. I've never seen a metro as well-organized despite 15 private rail companies splitting the system. The only problem is the operating hours, the last train rush is insane some nights.

The English button does work great... But doesn't tell you a DAMN THING about which line to transfer to get to some location just how much it costs. And when you need to transfer green to blue, good luck, because you better know that this one blue arrow pointing left means you need to go upstairs, cross the street, go into an entirely different station and then go down two flights of stairs with basically no more directions in English.

I was surprised that the machines only took cash, but it was annoying as hell that we were 10yen short and the nearest ATM was 2 blocks away under the street then back up again.

The rush for the 11-11:30pm trains are nuts. I've never seen so many black suits filled by unsmiling faces than the last train out near Tsukiji.

Have you tried using google maps? In my experience, it works great for Tokyo transit options.

Next time I'm in Japan I'll definitely try that!

Not as good as Germany or DC.

Did you just claim DC public transit is good? Wow. Coherent bus lines are few and far between. Light rail is non-existent. And the Metro is falling apart at the seems... Prone to excessive delays. Entire lines are brought down for extended periods to perform decades of deferred maintenance. There's no ring routes - to get from Dulles to Rockville, you have to go all the way downtown and back out again. The system was built without consideration for express lines. And neither of the DC airports are on the same line as Union Station.

It's easy to buy a card, and get on the right track. Your day to day minutia is of little concern to people that just need to get on and get somewhere.

Except when the train isn’t running at all. Or the rail catches on fire. Both of which are shockingly common.

A ring route from Bethesda to Largo is under construction and it's called the Purple Line. Metrorail could be better and has it's own shortcomings but it is one of the best in the US and far from nonexistent.

I said light rail (trams, streetcars) is non-existent. There is a test line in South DC, but nothing that’s actually useful for commuting or getting across the city.

My wife tried to use Metro for her Reston->downtown commute. It was a disaster - rail delays made it completely untenable. Then she tried the bus. It was more consistent, but overcrowded. She ended up driving 4/5 days because it was faster, cheaper, and more consistent.

> The ticket machines are almost all cash only. And instructions in other languages might have well used Google translate.

That's probably only hold true for (Western) tourists. And I don't think it is fair to compare on that. Tokyo (and Japan in general) rail system can be really intimidating but that's just because its sheer size, but once you know your way around it, it's gotta be among the best rail system in the world.

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