> I categorically reject the notion that any city which has the longest commute times in the entire country as having a good transportation system

By how much? What's the variance like compared to other cities? Are we comparing NYC commute times to cities that don't have public transportation systems used en masse? If I live in Houston and drive 15 minutes to work, is it really fair to compare it to spending 30 minutes on a subway?

"Average commute time" isn't extremely relevant if we're including cities where most people don't commute by public transportation, given the subject of the article.

> I had a friend who was born and raised in the New York City area...

I spend 15 minutes commuting to work each day in NYC, compared to 45 when I was in SF. Based on that fact, I can conclusively say that SF's transportation system is 3x worse than NYC's based on my personal anecdote.