Cincinnati is home to the largest unused subway system in the world (2016)

Trying to get to Circular Quay from western suburbs for instance is not all that nice.

Buses too but they’re not as dominant as in north america. Trams are generally quieter, prettier and less obtrusive. And with quite frequent service. Also easy to know your way around without knowing the routes as they’ll have lines on a map.

This is actually a negative. Build a train, and it's really hard to move. This actually spurs investment. A bus line can be taken away with the stroke of a pen.

Compare that to a subway that just goes below most obstacles in a straight line, travels at >80km/h and usually has no places to yield whatsoever. Fast travel in a predictable way, independent of traffic, weather, whatever. Maybe rush hour will make getting into the subway a little slower, but that's about it.

Subway is far superior to everything, including trams and trains for urban environments. It is expensive to build however, which is why in Europe it is usually supplemented with trams and busses for outlying routes or to fill the gaps between tunnels. Flexibility is rather a minus actually, because it leads to bus routes being subject to "snaking" through neighborhoods to satisfy the occasional political whim. Planted 5 trees and a bench? Call it "Mayour Mueller Park", add a bus stop with a 5min detour. Lather, rinse, repeat. Subways are somewhat immune to that.

Some built other alternatives to buses or shared-grade trams, for example by putting fast local trains under same ticket system (train-based local transit was very popular in UK till Beeching Axe, too), others experiment with things like separate-grade trams - cheaper than proper train-line, but still achieve separation from car traffic.

Because the same thing that gives buses flexibility and cheap start, is the thing that makes the biggest problem - sharing space with car traffic.

If there's a traffic jam, buses stop too. If something takes out part of car infrastructure, the dedicated lanes might be lost for a time, too. When Lazienkowski Bridge burned down in 2015 in Warsaw, figuring a connection that allowed one to take train or subway became crucial, as previously very fast buses (bus/taxi lanes!) would give me a commute longer than commuting from Amsterdam to London by train.

Something no one brought up is the recent-ish idea of bus rapid transit (BRT), which solves the problem of not having exact change, because who does these days? BRT gives some of the advantages of rail like fare machines and dedicated right-of-ways. Albuquerque (which is far too small for a subway) just put in its first line.

Residents in both places pay for their housing units but share the costs for roads, sewers, etc. Denser cities have an advantage in this regard.

I think it's a problem the way that cities have grown via sprawl over the past few decades, and a lot of southern cities have grown a lot during that time. Apparently it's more profitable to build further out instead of infilling, and build housing developments instead of integrated neighbourhoods. It's depressing to see apartment complexes with sidewalks to nowhere and nothing to do but drive a couple/few miles to the nearest applebees or whatever.

I think the problem with crazy drivers comes with the amount and density of traffic, the long commutes, the divided highways with people driving well over the already fast speed limits while people are pulling in and out of plazas, etc. This can be brutal for the people who need to deal with that every day.

The neighborhoods in older cities, or older parts of cities, tend to be grids of various sized roads dispersing traffic as opposed to cul-de-sacs funnelling everyone in and out of their complexes and developments onto a couple of congested main roads.

I've lived in a northern city, much of it built before the automobile, but not anywhere as crowded as Chicago or NYC.

I'm not personally bitter, except for maybe zoning laws that don't allow for more density. I've had a work form home job for quite a while, and haven't had to deal much with bad traffic. I do feel sad for the people I know who have to commute more than an hour in bad traffic, I feel sad for the working poor who struggle to keep a car on the road, I feel sad for the kids in some of these places who need a ride to see any of their friends, the teenagers with nowhere to hang out besides the Waffle House parking lot, etc.

Also, I'm sure that the HOAs so many people live in wouldn't allow anyone to convert their single into a double, or build an auxiliary dwelling in the backyard.

I wonder if areas of the city not under an HOA regime would allow stuff like that?

It's a balancing act.

A helicopter is theoretically great, but in practice helipads on Manhattan were removed in 1980s because of several spectacular crashes, so it's only practical between e.g. the financial district and the airports, which is probably where all the customers are anyway.

You basically said "people who disagree are mostly children".

I thought HCMC was the common nomenclature and saying Saigon would be like saying Ceylon rather than Sri Lanka.

I can't stand the subway. LIRR on the other hand is quite nice.

Of course the video's edited to only show the pissed of cyclists.

Having done a lot of this kind of riding, let me tell you what likely happened: The kids were riding as a group, acting stupid (running reds, popping wheelies, etc.). BMW driver either said something to them, or drove aggressively near the group. The group rides, surrounding his car to fuck with him a little. BMW driver hits his brakes rather than slow down, cyclist crashes into the SUV (this part is confirmed). Kids are livid, and the pedestrian camera rolls.

The alternative to that sequence is that these kids are beating the shit out of an SUV with their bicycles unprovoked. Not buying it.

If you were there during that era, you can wear it like a badge of honor...like yeah fuck, I survived that fucking place, yeah man I can survive anywhere....

NYC has been Disneyland since 9/11. Even before that it had almost a decade of cleaning up.

It might feel like the mid-80s again now, but only JUST now.

Still it's mostly an opinion shaped by the environment and mostly prevalent in the US, and to lesser extent, other sparsely populated countries with significant sprawl.

The fact that the sprawl makes it ineffective and expensive to lay an effective public transit is what makes it seem undesirable.

The fact that it's ineffective makes it relegated to what poor people use, deepening the issue.

And this goes as just personal experience, but my US friends in the EU insist on driving through city traffic and spending 3-4 as much time in commuting, and it takes a while until they give up.

Some of them aren't even used to do groceries by foot, for a large chunk of the US population that involves driving to a Walmart.