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by throwaway2037 8 days ago

    > Wealthy people in NYC have no problem with the subway.
No trolling: I gotta ask: Is this humor? If so, hat tip. Else: "Wealthy people in NYC (Manhattan)" have a car and driver. They don't care about the subway.

What I do believe: People that earn 200K to 400K in NYC/Manhattan still frequently ride the subway to work. Why? They rent/buy an apartment on an extremely convenient subway line to their office. They are not quite rich enough to have a car and driver.

1 comments

> People that earn 200K to 400K in NYC/Manhattan still frequently ride the subway to work. Why? They rent/buy an apartment on an extremely convenient subway line to their office.

Sure, this is mostly what I was referring to. The overwhelming number of people in SF would never dream of choosing where to live based off public transit access. I cant speak to billionaires, but the upper middle class of NYC(imo these people are all wealthy but we can change that word if you like) are mostly happy or at least open to public transit. Its not a class thing until you get to billionaire level. Therefore the reason people don't use public transit isn't because it's associated with the underclass, it's because almost all of it in the US is objectively worse than other transportation options.

    > The overwhelming number of people in SF would never dream of choosing where to live based off public transit access.
I want to push back on this idea. Why would Manhattan (and the very selective group of people that I discussed) be any different than San Francisco? Think about it: Imagine that you work for Uber/Twitter/Google/Meta in San Francisco and earn 200K to 400K total comp. It is very unlikely that you drive to work. (Let's assume your office is downtown or SoMa.) You ride Muni Metro or BART. Where do you think these people live? Just like the junior bankers/lawyers in Manhattan, they live in a neighborhood with excellent access to Muni Metro or BART to make their commute as convenient as possible. I don't say it often here on HN, but if you live in the Northeast Quadrant of San Francisco, it is quite reasonable to live without a car. The best mass transit options are overwhelmingly in that quadrant of SF.