| I think the subway in NYC is pretty great, though by no means perfect. Amsterdam doesn't have great public transportation. It would drive me insane when I lived there (Indische Buurt / Science Park). Their system of public transportation relies a lot on connecting between bus/tram/subway/railway, but I never found the connections to work well. The frequency of most lines is also pretty darn bad. Unfortunately a lot of people living in Amsterdam are fine with the sorry state of their public transportation because they feel the Amsterdam mindset is to ride a bike. (There's a lot of truth to that, of course, but the reality is that a lot of non-white Amsterdam-born people rely on public transportation.) Stockholm's public transportation seemed fine last time I was there, but it's definitely not better than NYC. When I visited a university there, I had to take a subway + bus. Buses suck! Nevertheless, the connection was not bad overall. The great thing about the subway in NYC is the how the stations are spread out on the map. There are a lot of stations and you will find them in sensible locations. The fact that the subway is operational 24/7 is also amazing. That's a lot more unusual than some people give credit for. You don't even find that in Singapore or Hong Kong or London or Paris. What's less than great is the reliability and the frequency of the trains to/from Brooklyn. Going from one point in Brooklyn to another also sometimes requires going through Manhattan, which makes the trip take too long. Another sore point is communication. The signs are confusing and there are virtually no CRTs/LCDs to guide you (if Paris and Brussels can handle the vandalism, so should NYC). The verbal announcements are often confusing or wrong (multiple times, late at night, I heard 'train X was canceled' just as it arrived). A lot of the time you can't even properly hear them. The train models are also incredibly outdated. Unfortunately, in NY, buses are no good alternative because they are always late and absurdly slow. I always suspected they were intended foremost for old and disabled people since they accelerate very slowly after a stop and seem to stop every block. I have never been to Helsinki, Tokyo, or Berlin. One subway system I want to mention is the Beijing one. It's by no means perfect, but the frequency of the subway is just amazing. At many–perhaps most–stations a train stops every one or two minutes. My patience for waiting for trains never recovered after living there. |