Coming to a place with decent and cheap public transport six months ago: 1. It's faster than commuting by car during rush hour, and otherwise 10%-20% longer wit

Coming to a place with decent and cheap public transport six months ago: 1. It's faster than commuting by car during rush hour, and otherwise 10%-20% longer within the city limits. 2. There's no crazies. I haven't seen so much as someone rocking and muttering, let alone bothering other passengers. 3. Yeah, it's a petri dish--I've been sick enough to miss days of work twice in the last six months, which is more than in the two years before moving here. I'm not sure how well 1 and 2 could generalize from Germany to America. You'd need Harberger Taxes or liberal use of Eminent Domain to put rail networks into a city. You'd need competent and well-funded law enforcement to curtail the crazies. #3 we could fix in either area with UVC and filtered air circulation; or I could just get comfortable with being the weirdo wearing an N95 mask every day I have also commuted by motorcycle for around 30k miles. It does save a lot of money, but it's not much faster than cars if you're strictly following the law in the 49 states where lane splitting isn't fully legal. You also have 90 times the risk of death per mile travelled, compared to a car, which balances the increased disease risk on a train.