[bandana]

I find taking the subway in Paris or NYC a terrible experience. The smell, the crowds, the stress... after a ride I need to take a shower. As an alternative, I prefer the South East Asia "motorbike centric" cities, if only they could switch to eletric it would be perfect.

[paxys]

If you actually live and commute in these motorbike centric cities rather than visit as a tourist, you will change your tune very quick. They are orders of magnitude more dangerous, streets are narrow, traffic is chaotic and rules are non-existent, summers are hell (and good luck finding a workplace with a shower), you have to dodge aggressive cars/pedestrians/animals on a daily basis. I'd take a London/Paris/NYC style subway system over it in a heartbeat.

[bandana]

I have been living in Saigon for the past 10 months. I'd say on the contrary, the first few days (what a tourist would experience) are the most stressful, but after a while you get used to it and it's alright.

[jeromegv]

Saigon and the great experience of crossing the street... among the highest rate in the world of car accidents. Come on, let's be serious, this is better than the Paris subway? Under what metric?

[freddie_mercury]

Vietnam isn't even in the Top 30 for traffic accidents. It isn't "among the highest rate".

Vietnam's traffic fatality rate is 26 per 100,000. About the same was America's traffic fatality rate in early 1970s before Ralph Nader convinced people to care about safety. But Americans had no problem driving on roads in 1970s. Virtually no one thought it was too dangerous to drive in America at those fatality rates.

(Today fatality rates are down ~50% from those numbers thanks to Ralph Nader.)

And the Vietnam numbers continue to decrease as the country develops. The WHO numbers are based on 2016 numbers. There were a reported 8,417 fatalities in 2016 but the WHO assumes that's a lie and adjusts upwards to 24,970 fatalities. In any case, fatalities have been dropping by about 5% a year. In 2019 there were 7,624 fatalities, for instance.

[Symbiote]

After visiting Vietnam for three weeks, and seeing 5 serious road accidents including a dead body, I don't believe the official statistics.

[Narretz]

Have you lived in a city with a subway for an extended period of time? I reckon you get used to almost any sort of transportation in a certain time.

[lovemenot]

Do people there still say Saigon?

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

[freddie_mercury]

Yes everyone says Saigon. (I've lived in Saigon for 7+ years.)

In official stuff they'll say Ho Chi Minh City but in casual conversation, I'd guesstimate 80%+ of the time people say Saigon. But if someone drops in a Ho Chi Minh City instead it isn't especially noteworthy.

Saigon also gets used on things like, say, book titles: https://www.fahasa.com/sai-gon-ky-an-cuoc-phieu-luu-cua-nhun...

or movie titles: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12937684/

Saying "Saigon" doesn't have any particular connotation. Like, it doesn't mean "we refuse to accept the North won" or "we refuse to accept the renaming". (Some Viet Kieu in America are crazy about that kind of thing, though.) It is mostly just that Saigon is two syllables and Ho City Minh City is five syllables.

That said: "Saigon" tends to refer to the inner metro area. "Ho Chi Minh City" actually covers a massive area -- it is the size of a province. It is divided into 24 districts and I don't think anyone from the outer 5 rural districts would say they live in "Saigon".

Also note that the airport in Saigon still has the code SGN.

[Uberphallus]

Airport codes very rarely change though. Chișinău in Moldova has KIV, from its name in Russian, Kishinyov.

[lovemenot]

Thanks for the education.

[spoonjim]

The people not vocally complaining about Saigon traffic are the many who have died in it.

[Reason077]

Cycling and good metro/subway systems aren't mutually exclusive, of course. Cities with good public transit are often good cycling cities, too, due to being able to maintain a good level of density without excessive levels of car traffic, modest traffic speeds, etc.

(As for motorbikes in cities, I'm not a fan due all the noise and pollution. But electric bikes are great!)

[thatfrenchguy]

Yeah, but if you live there it's actually awesome. It's midnight and you're drunk after seeing your friends and you need to go home ? No issue, no cost to get home. It's Sunday and you want to go to the museum ? No issue, no cost to get home.

[goldenkey]

Yeah no issue except the muggers, rapists, murderers, and other criminal predators you have to fend off.

As someone who lived in NYC most of my life, hold on to that pepper spray and that 4" pocket knife real tight.

And make sure no cops see it, because they love collecting souvenirs and couldn't care less about the legality of your self-defense items.

Now, with the police budget cut $1B dollars, crime is skyrocketing.

Gotta love how this kind of stuff can happen in broad daylight with little no immediate security response:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaF2AdlXAus

Gotham is back baby!

And if we aren't gonna talk about crime, let's talk about that beautifully sludge smelling runoff from the subway tracks whenever it rains. Quick way to a nice putrid hair conditioning!

And let's not talk about the condition of the tracks and how much electricity is being wasted by the poorly lubricated trains and tracks. Those thunderous sounds when the subway passes? That is the sound of energy being wasted, being converted to sound energy instead of locomotion.

I hate everything about NYC except the melting pot of intellectual diversity that it is.

P.S. I still live here, so don't tell me that my perspective is an outsider's one.

[dboreham]

Hmm. I haven't ridden the NYC subway much but I'd not worry about those risks in either London or Paris.

[baxtr]

It’s probably safer, I don’t know the stats though. However, I myself have witnessed a young kid getting stabbed at a Paris subway station and a box fight at a Berlin subway station. So it’s not like things don’t happen in Europe.

EDIT: boxing fight

[TedDoesntTalk]

What's a "box fight"? People hitting each other with cardboard boxes?

[hourislate]

I saw the biggest rat of my life waiting for a train in NYC. At first I though it was a racoon or beaver or something. I spent some time in the city (East Village) during the late 70's and again off and on through out the 80's. Good Lord people who experienced NYC after Giuliani have no idea what it was like.

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....

[busterarm]

Yeah, it's pretty bad now again, but it's kind of disingenuous the way you framed it.

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.

[throwawaygulf]

"They hated him because he told the truth."

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

[busterarm]

> LIRR on the other hand is quite nice.

I haven't been on any train after 6pm that wasn't loaded with drunks, in either direction. It gets especially bad going back out around 1am. I wish they didn't allow drinking on the trains.

[throwawaygulf]

Hah! That's something to behold! Grab a beer to go in Penn, and drink it on the ride!

I'd rather be loaded with drunks on LIRR than take the trash chute that is the subway any day of the week.

[jgwil2]

And yet, none of your criticisms apply to transit per se. Really you're just complaining about New York in general.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Zoo York

[burnthrow]

The driver stopped short, causing a cyclist behind him to crash. That's a crime. He can play victim all he wants in his BMW SUV, he got off lucky, both legally and extralegally.

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.

[TedDoesntTalk]

What would they have done if they'd gotten into the car or the driver got out?

[burnthrow]

They wouldn't realistically get into the car (they didn't), but if they did, they'd trash the interior too. If the driver got out to fight, they'd beat him up obviously. If he just got out to "clear things up", they'd insult him and maybe slap him around a bit.

The driver's problem is he's in his own little bubble and was infuriated by bicyclists inconveniencing his drive (oh dear). I bet he'll tell people how scary NYC is, like commenter `goldenkey` above, and hopefully won't return to be so inconvenienced by kids on bicycles. His conundrum was 100% avoidable by not being a tool.

Anyway I hate selectively edited videos like that, making the driver look like some victim. It's Andy Ngo-quality material.

[goldenkey]

Would you please provide full video or evidence backing up your claims?

[nathanvanfleet]

Well it's nice you can't handle it. But in an actual practical sense public transit makes large cities possible. It's more efficient and for people who are used to it not a stressful endeavor if it's actually managed properly.

[kumarsw]

I think you have cherry-picked the roughest and oldest subway systems in cities with relatively high crime rates. While the Paris Metro can be scary, the Singapore MRT system is clean, quiet and boring.