Yes I rode the NYC subway for 20 years. When you are young and edgy, you can deal with it, even though I found it regularly traumatizing at that time as well (delays, trains stuck in tunnels, 100 degree subway platforms, crushing crowds, intense inconvenience if you have to carry anything beyond a single bag).
The ultimate misery, when trains fell behind and youd spend an hour or more on a completely packed, sweltering platform watching train after train fully stuffed shoulder to shoulder pass through not stopping since each train is full, until one comes where you yourself have to shove yourself and your bags into the doorway and hope the doors can close so you can just get home. Never again. I suspect anti car people just don't see these things as that big of a deal. They're young. It's all exciting to them, I guess. I didn't have a car at all back then either, the city / commuter life seemed perfect to me for many years until I began to realize I hated these things.
Forget about the crime, mental illness, and homeless issues, just being shoved among "regular" people every day, all averting gazes and attempting to cope with dense crowding among people you don't know, by the time I was older I had become a strict remote worker, and when I had a kid we were out of there at last.
I have an EV now and getting to drive is like the best part of my day. I live very far from dense cities. A lot of people genuinely like to live this way and the posts here talking about the "car industrial complex" somehow coercing us all into some way we wouldn't otherwise prefer should consider that a lot of people really don't like crowds.
I am anti car, but not anti car for everyone in all cases.
"I suspect anti car people just don't see these things as that big of a deal."
I do see it, and it is a huge deal. Those problems seem like issues of underfunding (a d more).. the amount spent on roads is just astronomical. If there were any kind of equity of personal vs public transport, the subway would be gold plated! (Perhaps not, but funding easily could be tripled and still not be at an equitable share of subsidy funding [yes, I do want those property tax dollars back and to stop paying for endless tarmac!])
Bottom line, the issues I do think are seen. It's that they are symptoms of neglect and a culture that does not value public transit (despite personal transit does not scale to what is needed!). I'm emphasizing that personal transit is a non-solution. Hence without a first rate public system, traffic, gridlock - nobody wins.
You are still safer riding that public transit then riding a car. And it is usable when you are too old/sick to drive. And it is nitnlike traffic jam were unheard of for cars.
The ultimate misery, when trains fell behind and youd spend an hour or more on a completely packed, sweltering platform watching train after train fully stuffed shoulder to shoulder pass through not stopping since each train is full, until one comes where you yourself have to shove yourself and your bags into the doorway and hope the doors can close so you can just get home. Never again. I suspect anti car people just don't see these things as that big of a deal. They're young. It's all exciting to them, I guess. I didn't have a car at all back then either, the city / commuter life seemed perfect to me for many years until I began to realize I hated these things.
Forget about the crime, mental illness, and homeless issues, just being shoved among "regular" people every day, all averting gazes and attempting to cope with dense crowding among people you don't know, by the time I was older I had become a strict remote worker, and when I had a kid we were out of there at last.
I have an EV now and getting to drive is like the best part of my day. I live very far from dense cities. A lot of people genuinely like to live this way and the posts here talking about the "car industrial complex" somehow coercing us all into some way we wouldn't otherwise prefer should consider that a lot of people really don't like crowds.