Nikki_E

just for the record? I'm a native New Yorker. I live in Austin. I have nothing particular against Houston. I've only been there once or twice and not really long enough to appreciate it. I wouldn't render a judgment based on my limited experience. Sure seemed to be wall-to-wall highway though which was not my FAVORITE thing, but it could be all perception. What brought me to say this is that while Googling to try to find the 10 or so best cities for public transit, I was brought to a thread on this board where someone posted the top cities rated by visitors based on certain categories (I seem to recall that this was at least several months old) and someone made the comment, "Who cares about things like best people-watching and best mass transit? New York has the biggest mass transit system in the world and they came in dead last in commute time." I care about mass transit. It is extraordinarily important in the lives of working and middle-class people who can't afford to be tied to things like car loans and insurance and maintenance on a vehicle. We fall in that category, regretably, and I live in terror of the car breaking down because there is no getting to the store, no getting to work, no getting to school, no having a life if that happens. In fact, I have analyzed this to a huge extent and by the time you add the cost of vehicle ownership to the cost of rent or mortgage here, you have balanced out the cost of living between New York City and any major city in Texas. You see, the vast majority of New Yorkers don't own cars and don't need to own cars. Having given you all this background, I would just like to say that the reason NY came in dead last in commute time is because they aren't predicating it on just the mass transit system. They are figuring in people from outlying areas (remember that NYC has about 8 million people but the NY tri-state area has about 20 million people and includes Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut) who despite the availability of mass transit refuse to take the TRAIN. The Long Island Expressway, the only way to NYC by car, is well known as little more than a huge parking lot. When you have a compact geographical area as the Northeastern states are compared to Texas, it's hard to really keep traffic moving -- and we have a lot more toll roads to slow things down. It's unfortunate that these suburbaners insist on being so resistant because you can get from Montauk (check a map of Long Island and look all way east until you're about to fall into the water) to Manhattan using the Long Island Rail Road in about 40 minutes. Analysts never tell you these things, just like they compare costs of living in different cities by assuming you'll own a car in both places when clearly this is not the case.