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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

This describes a very sheltered experience of NYC. There are a ton of cultural events in other boroughs. I don’t know anyone who is afraid to ride the subway and wouldn’t consider it dirty by transit standards. I’ve been in NYC for nine years.

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I question your standards if you don't think that the NYC subway is dirty. I've ridden public transit in several cities across three continents, lived in three NA cities including NYC, and it does not come close. Smelling urine inside a train station is not normal.

I’ve ridden dozens of transit systems across four continents (I happen to collect transit means of payment as a weird hobby). Smelling urine is not a regular occurrence for me on the L or 4/5/6. Which lines do you usually ride? There are a lot of them and I know the experience varies.

I rode the A and the 2/3/4 lines usually. Try standing near the edge of the track. You'll get a whiff. It's not just that either, there's also a ton of litter and way more homeless people in the system than I've seen anywhere else. It's unhygienic to the point that it's a joke to New Yorkers not to get on a train car that's empty. Never seen that elsewhere.

Of course the state of the subway is a reflection of the city as a whole rather than an isolated issue, and that's true everywhere in my experience.

If you ride the Bart seeing urine is quite normal, along with the producer sitting in the middle of the puddle.

Agree with you on the cultural events, but the NYC subway is definitely dirty compared to the systems of the two other cities I've lived in (Toronto and London).

I was mostly in LIC and Manhattan though. Maybe it's not so dirty in the other boroughs?

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