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Comment by mushufasa | Hacker News Reader

Having grown up in DC and New York, I would say more strongly that there's no other city in the USA that has comparable mass transit.

The way I would put it is -- in New York, it is more of a hassle to have a car than to go without. In all those other cities, while there is some mass transit, you will find yourself wanting a car.

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What's pretty much unique about NYC, especially Manhattan, in the US is that there's no cultural expectation that a well-paid professional will own a car. By comparison, people can get by without owning a car in Boston/Cambridge--I did as an undergrad--but get out of school and a lot of your friends probably live in the suburbs/exurbs, you need a car to head off to the mountains, etc. Sure, you can rent and Uber up to a point but most people find it 1.) gets old and 2.) As a practical matter means they mostly just stay in the city because doing otherwise is too much of a hassle.

DC is still easier to navigate by car than by metro and bus, at least when I last lived there in 2016. Red line from MD would regularly shut down or have delays, and you were looking at a 2+ hour commute into the district. If you could get a parking spot you could reliably beat metro by about 10 minutes with much less variance. And you cannot navigate a circumferential route in a reasonable time, the purple line is the first to really attempt this and is like a drop in the bucket. If you live and work in the city it’s doable, but cross a river or the beltway and it’s really not. I had friends in Baltimore that could not get by without a car either, and they made a really dedicated effort. Mass transit in the US - outside of NYC - is just not viable at scale.

Metro being within 10 minutes of driving is quite good. Coming from the silver line, you’d be lucky if you can get within 30 minutes.

Parking is such a dice roll in DC that using a car for intra-city travel is not efficient.

Lots of DC residents don’t have cars; most housing doesn’t include parking.

I grew up in NYC and I think it has a lot of problems that have prevented me from moving back there since college, this said...

NYC has the largest train system in the entire world, especially when you combine the various nearby train systems that aren't a part of the main subway like LIRR, NJ transit, path and Metro north (in China which technically is longer they count long distance commuter rail). The subway alone has more stops than any train system in the world.

eh, having lived in both chicago and nyc, chicago's transit system is pretty much on par with nyc to me. MTA is all built around going to and from manhattan and it can be a struggle if you have to do something else, like going from parts of queens to brooklyn. Chicago's hyperrational grid and busses make up pretty well for the gaps in the L. now the cabs in new york, nothing beats them (although these days more and more cabbies don't seem to actually know the city very well)

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