>>1377143I love New York, and it's a great place to be if you're an urbanite, cyclist, or railfan, but it can be a total shitshow and things move at a crawl here. The ground work for the Second Avenue line was put in place in the 70s and was only finished in 2016. And on top of that they didn't create an option for express service almost completely neutering any real possibility of a Q/T expansion to the Bronx.
>>1377226Chicago has nice trains, but what I thought was strange when I visited is that they felt more like LIRR/Metro North/NJT trains with the front facing seats. I don't know if it was just because I only was able to ride the Blue Line but it was a sharp contrast from the NYC Subway. Though the VentraCard is LEAGUES ahead of the shitty MetroCard "Please swipe again."
NY has similar issues though.
>the aforementioned Second Ave line>not expanding the subway to the transit desertssuch as Staten Island/East Queens/Bronx/Southeast Brooklyn
>some lines feel unfinished 2/5 should end at Ave U instead of Brooklyn College, G train should return to Forest Hills, etc
>only two lines have CBTC Unsurprisingly they're the two that run the best in the system (L and 7, the 1 is a bizarre exception)
>it's extremely difficult to go between boroughs without passing through ManhattanThe G train is the only line that doesn't and it is so truncated and has such bad connections that it may as well be a shuttle. The fact that the G doesn't have an underground free transfer at Atlantic-Pacific is absurd, and combine that with the fact that it doesn't even connect to every line in Queens since it abruptly stops at Court Square.
It's great to have such an expansive and useful public transit system, but NY needs to continue to expand and improve and it hasn't done enough of that.
