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Comment by earl | Hacker News Reader

Highly educated populace. Good mathematicians and engineers. Generally nice people. Rich cultural history. A pride in their culture and in being Russian that Americans don't, in my experience, have (disregarding our jingoistic biblethumpers). Tall skinny blonds if that's your thing. A more relaxed culture in terms of laws and rules than the US. Excellent, if heavy, food. Better public transport, at least in Moscow, than anywhere in the US.

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Excellent public transport in Moscow??? It's so untrue, I just assume you don't live here.

The Moscow subway is cheap and as of ~ 2005, utterly reliable -- far more reliable than NYC subways. In SF, muni is a bad joke, and bart breaks every other month.

Reliable? On any given year at least one of the major stations is fully or partially closed down. Recently Park Kultury was partially closed for several months, Belorusskaya is probably going to be closed for some time next year. The latter is a very high-traffic station so maybe they will just limit its capacity by 50%. 90% of the time I go via subway, at least one escalator (they are usually in groups of two) is not working, reducing capacity by 50%, with people waiting in a huge line. Sometimes the train will just stop between the stations and stand there for anywhere between 10 minutes and half an hour. Rarely, like once in several months, some shit will happen on Filevskaya line and it will halt for several hours. Underground it's always uncomfortably warm and stuffy – both in summer and in winter. More than enough to get sweaty. The Filevskaya (surface) line, on the contrary, was very cold in the winter (maybe it's better now with the new trains, though). Passenger density of one per square foot in rush hour is also not very comfortable, and when random strangers apply considerable force to push you deeper into the train so that they can get in too, it's also not OK (and it happens in rush hour always, not once a day/week/year). The new trains are simply idiotic. They always smell bad to some extent (they probably chose overly absorbing materials for the floor), they have no place for a map (the few places that could hold it are covered with ads), so the map is posted on the window, and is remarkably unreadable because of the combination of bright white letter outline, an otherwise transparent background, and the fact that you have to lean over a sitting person to see anything unless you have perfect vision and the train is on that rare spot of railroad where the train is not tossed sideways because the tracks are so old.

And it's not cheap. One pass ticket costs nearly $1. It was cheaper to take a bus in LA where median salary is several times higher. The subway is so popular only because it's rather fast with the roads being totally jammed in rush hour (and the buses go with them since there are no dedicated bus lanes). Except for speed, pretty much anything else about Moscow subway is horrid, unless you are a tourist who values the beauty of central stations and was brought there once and in off-peak hour.

Um... if you think that's bad, all I can say is you haven't used public transport in the US. To pick just one thing -- the subway in NYC isn't air conditioned. In a city that regularly sees 80F-95F temperatures with high humidity. In the summer, the subway doesn't make you just sweaty; it makes you pour sweat out of your body. Entering the stations feels like descending the mouth of hell.

And in NYC, the subways break all the time. Like when it rains. Because, you know, that never happens in the city :rolleyes: And again, passenger density in Moscow is no greater than on the green line in NYC. Shoving is worse in NYC. And for the record, I rode the subway I'd at least 600 times.

Or in SF, it's a minor miracle when elevators and escalators work. Or when muni gets you places reasonably quickly. And you see stuff like, well, your halfwit muni driver pulling over to fire up her crack pipe. Or a banger dropping his gun down his pants. Or street trash with an odor noticeable 20 feet away physically assaulting passengers. Etc.

You'll note that in my original post, I compared it favorably to American public transport. The fact that you haven't mentioned, in two exchanges, any comparison except price in LA where Moscow is worse than American transport makes me believe you aren't aware of any. Quoting myself: "Better public transport, at least in Moscow, than anywhere in the US."

I indeed haven't seen much of US transportation, only MTA buses in LA which seemed nice (they can even carry bicycles on the outside). European subways are not perfect but totally reasonable, definitely better than Moscow. Frankly it's hard for me to imagine that most public transit in the US is worse than in Moscow. I'll have to see it to believe it, hope will be able soon :)

I've had problems with Muni, but uh, nothing ever that bad. The bigger beef for me is that on most bus routes, from A to B less than a mile, you can outwalk the bus.

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