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It's the other way round: cities that aren't plagued by homelessness, rampant drug use, and criminality can have good public transit. Middle class people simply won't pay (in taxes or directly) for public transit that acts as a homeless shelter and routinely features crimes against them.

Western European countries are also much stricter on law and order via transit. Brussels, for example, deploys heavily armed police to check fares on the metro often. And Switzerland…you really don’t want to break the laws there even if you have nothing to lose.

I had three interactions with Swiss police in various cities, and they were all ok. Maybe it depends on the person?

Well, it also depends if you can speak a national language. Nothing beats getting chewed out by a Swiss cop for only speaking English.

Transit isn't plagued by those here either, but a tiny minority gets a lot of attention.