I find it odd that folks are even comparing NYC to London. NYCs metro is horrible. Dirty, nearly always broken and late, trains way too far apart and not even close to servicing large enough parts of the city. Granted, I have a relatively small sample size of both cities under my belt, but the Underground was definitely one of the enormous pluses in London's favor. Of course, I don't live in a place with stupendous public transit, so perhaps I'm not the best judge of how it should work. But as a complete newb I was able to figure out the entire transit system in less than a day and they got me everywhere I wanted to go and they weren't late a single time for the (again short) seven days I was there, morning, day or evening.
