[tizzdogg]

The population of San Francisco is 800k, so it is significantly smaller than any of those cities.

If you are talking about the entire Bay Area that is a different thing, but not really a valid comparison. The infrastructure problems in San Francisco tend to be due to it being a small city surrounded by lots of even smaller cities which dont want to play along for the greater good of the region (eg by expanding BART or shouldering the burden of homeless services). If the Bay Area as a whole was governed as a single unit a lot of these problems would be improved. But it's not.

It's a small city in an earthquake area with large hills, and uncooperative neighbors, all of which make it very difficult to build massive subway or streetcar systems.

[ido]

The populations I mentioned for the other cities are also metropolitan (urban populations are smaller in all of them).

Zurich's city-proper population for example is just less than 400k: half of SF's.

[tizzdogg]

Well that may be true. Of the cities you list I'm only familiar with the metros in vancouver and vienna, both of which are very nice. My point was not that muni doesn't have issues, but that they mostly stem from regional political problems which presumably those other regions dont have to the same extent. If the whole bay area would get on board with bart, things would be a lot better.

In any case comparing it to a third world country like the parent comment is a bit of a stretch.

[Bahamut]

It does not compare favorably to Washington, D. C. either.