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I haven't had an opportunity to ride the NYC subway, but I was a regular user of the Shenzhen/Hong Kong subway for a few months during a long term project in th

I haven't had an opportunity to ride the NYC subway, but I was a regular user of the Shenzhen/Hong Kong subway for a few months during a long term project in the region and I would have to say its incredible/insane. If you ever get a chance, experiencing the Hong Kong system at rush hour is crazy but you will be amazed by it efficiency. Don't know if I can say the same about SF or Toronto.

stuxnet79 10y ago
Toronto's transit definitely needs improvement. But how does SF even figure into the equation? I thought all the west-coast cities were car-centric.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  San Francisco isn't, not really anyway. Actually, to be honest, it's kinda just crappy to get around no matter how you want to do it... but as far as cars are concerned, since the earthquake felled the Embarcadero Freeway the freeways are only on one side of the city, and even the fastest routes through town have a bunch of stoplights, and traffic is bad and slow. But it does have transit! Mostly, it has Caltrain and BART, which are essentially commuter rail systems that drop people downtown where they actually want to work. They have some issues but they fundamentally work. San Francisco also has MUNI, the Municipal Railway, which runs the streetcars (and also runs the buses) and, for the US, it's pretty good transit. But that's mostly just low expectations: there's one downtown tunnel (which shares half its route with BART) and then the rest is mostly interlined with the aforementioned traffic, and it is slow, and notoriously unreliable (even besies traffic, SFMTA has well-known issues with its relationship to its labor union which contribute substantially to no-show drivers, and in the absence of driverless buses that's a bit of a monkey wrench in normal operation.) And very few of the buses have dedicated bus lanes (although the Geary corridor might be getting some in the future as part of a bus rapid transit system some day soon). There is an ongoing project to connect Caltrain to Market Street and Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf with a new streetcar line. We'll see how well it works out... there's already been drama and delays about moving the alignment from 3rd St to 4th St...
cmurf 10y ago
SF is next to dreadful whether BART or train. It's light years behind the user experience of NYC MTA, it's always late and often not faster than car. Even Los Angeles' subway is a better experience, assuming your source and destination is a sane distance from a station (not a good assumption but otherwise the system itself is reasonably usable). I found the SF steam trollies to be more reliable, cleaner, and more timely than BART or Caltrain.

stuxnet79 10y ago

Toronto's transit definitely needs improvement. But how does SF even figure into the equation? I thought all the west-coast cities were car-centric.

fennecfoxen 10y ago
San Francisco isn't, not really anyway. Actually, to be honest, it's kinda just crappy to get around no matter how you want to do it... but as far as cars are concerned, since the earthquake felled the Embarcadero Freeway the freeways are only on one side of the city, and even the fastest routes through town have a bunch of stoplights, and traffic is bad and slow. But it does have transit! Mostly, it has Caltrain and BART, which are essentially commuter rail systems that drop people downtown where they actually want to work. They have some issues but they fundamentally work. San Francisco also has MUNI, the Municipal Railway, which runs the streetcars (and also runs the buses) and, for the US, it's pretty good transit. But that's mostly just low expectations: there's one downtown tunnel (which shares half its route with BART) and then the rest is mostly interlined with the aforementioned traffic, and it is slow, and notoriously unreliable (even besies traffic, SFMTA has well-known issues with its relationship to its labor union which contribute substantially to no-show drivers, and in the absence of driverless buses that's a bit of a monkey wrench in normal operation.) And very few of the buses have dedicated bus lanes (although the Geary corridor might be getting some in the future as part of a bus rapid transit system some day soon). There is an ongoing project to connect Caltrain to Market Street and Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf with a new streetcar line. We'll see how well it works out... there's already been drama and delays about moving the alignment from 3rd St to 4th St...

cmurf 10y ago

SF is next to dreadful whether BART or train. It's light years behind the user experience of NYC MTA, it's always late and often not faster than car. Even Los Angeles' subway is a better experience, assuming your source and destination is a sane distance from a station (not a good assumption but otherwise the system itself is reasonably usable). I found the SF steam trollies to be more reliable, cleaner, and more timely than BART or Caltrain.