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Comment by santaclaus | Hacker News Reader

America has lots of rad cities with strong economic opportunities: NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Austin, Denver, ...

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I live in the Boston area, and the only things that are world-class here are the Ivy League universities and Massachusetts General Hospital. This place doesn't deserve anything remotely like the ego it actually has.

(Take note: I'm originally from New York. There is a rivalry at work here.)

As a person who had the misfortune of taking Public transport from La Guardia to Manhattan, I would not label entire NYC "world-class" unless I get to append it with "mess".

Jamaica LIRR station, right?

That's JFK. Considerably easier, despite being considerably further away.

You should have taken the private express bus, and instead you complain about your poor choice? Eh?

Uh, thanks for the downvotes? My point is that there is no express public transit service from LaGuardia to Manhattan; there's a express private service, and most people know about it. If you look on the Internet it's pretty visible.

This kind of makes the point. A world-class city, but no good public transportation from airport to city center? World-class mess.

So NY would be a better city if they started an express bus service that competes with the existing, popular private bus service? Either way, I take the bus.

If a city wants to be truly world-class it needs to have a good public transportation system.

@eli_gottlieb: You're being downvoted for what reasons that should seem fairly obvious, so here's some support from a fellow native New Yorker :)

@sremani: We have really fucked this up. The lack of a direct rail link from any one of our three airports to Manhattan is shameful.

Boston is a fine city, but not world class. First time I flew into Logan I looked around thinking I must've flown into the small secondary airport.

I found Boston to be super provincial (outside of the university crowd), and way overpriced for what it offers. Moving there from a city like Chicago was really quite a shock for us. A fraction of the culture and food scene for a multiple of the price. We spent a year there and ended up moving to Providence, which is much better value for money and also has better food.

There's a world class non Ivy League university just outside Boston too.

I was including MIT in "Ivy League", even though it doesn't play football with the rest of them.

They do have an excellent reputation for participating in the games under their own rules, tho :-)

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