memes

I think you just underestimate how awful public transport is in the US. Beating what's available here is not a high bar to clear, especially when it's nonexistent in many places. It can also vary pretty widely across and within regions. I imagine public transport in London is a different beast from public transport in Manchester, for example.

When I was visiting Manchester in March, it was pretty great. I could get around the city via bus, tram or walking pretty easily, and trains between Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds were all pretty clean, even late at night, and the most I paid for two round-trip tickets was £48.40 going to Leeds and back. Everything else was below £30 for two people, round trip.i Wherever I got off, I could get an Uber to where I was going for less than £10 if I didn't feel like waiting for a bus, or there wasn't a bus nearby. For a similar trip here, for one person going from NYC to Philadelphia and back would run me in excess of £100 with Amtrak making the trip in about 90 minutes, or closer to £30 round trip, but with each leg taking nearly 3 hours without any delays on NJ Transit. A 15 minute Uber here to work would routinely run me close to £20 each way, before accounting for a tip.

Nobody was screaming in my face asking for "donations," there weren't people with amplifiers blasting music, or homeless folks left to stew in their own filth keeping entire cars unusable for anyone else due to the stench. Even walking about the cities at all hours of the night, I had a grand total of 3 people ask me for money in a week. Residents apologized a few times about how awful things were there, but it was absolutely lovely, even in the parts they thought were local embarrassments for allegedly being unbearably dirty or run down. Granted, it was nice and cool, so I didn't get to see if Manchester gets the same lovely summer effect that NYC does, where every outdoor space smells like hot piss and garbage once the temperature clears about 27°C.

Granted, spending a week in a city as tourists isn't the same as living there, but from folks I know who've made the move, it was a massive upgrade in terms of things like public transit and general quality of life compared to life in the US or Canada. I ran the numbers, and it would actually make sense for me to take over a 50% pay cut if I could move there. Heck, it was cheaper for us to eat out for every meal for a week straight for two people and me buying several coffees out a day than it is for me to shop and prepare every meal at home and make all my own coffee here. Even if things aren't as good as they used to be, they've still got us soundly beat in many regards.