Compared to driving in any major city, tho?

Mass transit doesn't have to be inherently dreadful, it's just badly implemented a lot, especially in North America. The London Underground is excellent. So are the systems in most Japanese cities, although I've not been personally. NYC isn't as good as it should be (and it's primed to get worse since they killed plans for a second tunnel under the Hudson and have been dreadfully underinvesting in the LIRR) but it is pretty damn good, and even Toronto manages to be pretty okay.

And realistically, we've tried to make cities car-friendly and it hasn't worked out well, because it turns out that density and cars do not mix. The Robert Moses methodology of punching enormous freeways through the hearts of urban areas and mandating that every building have a legally mandated minimum level of parking spaces has been a colossal failure on almost every level, as has been designing sprawling urban polities that simply smear the mess over a wider area. (I'm looking at you, Los Angeles and Houston.) My own city is actually dismantling a large part of the freeway running through its heart because it turns out that the damn thing is a major impediment to actually living and working downtown, which is sort of what a city is for.

This isn't to entirely denigrate Moses as a planner and builder. His bridge-building, crooked politics aside, was utterly necessary for NYC to survive and thrive. But thank god they killed the Mid-Manhattan Expressway, as well as his numerous other plans to pave over Manhattan.

... this went off on a tangent. I'm an enormous fan of cities as social, political, and architectural constructs and will talk about them for hours if you let me. Ask about the history of viaducts! I dare you.

-Merc
Keep Rat