Having spent the last two years in various Asian cities, I feel confident in saying most American cities could halve average commute times with no sacrifice to

Having spent the last two years in various Asian cities, I feel confident in saying most American cities could halve average commute times with no sacrifice to safety. To name a few cities that have much better commutes than the bay or NYC: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, and Seoul. Whether things get better in American cities is not a matter of technical innovation at all, but politics and economics.