They have a collective culture.

The individualistic nature of North America (and some Europeans countries) works amazingly in certain situations (like driving innovation and competition) but absolutely terribly in other situations (like respect for public amenities or banding together in a pandemic)

I worked in the loop for about 1.5 years 2016-2017, and I swear it turned me against trains. The noise (both on the train and near the tracks), and the vibration were unbearable.

My team was on the 4th floor of the red CNA building, which was the floor that was said to be high enough that it wasn't specially soundproofed.

We had to interrupt our meetings SEVERAL times every hour because of the noise of passing trains.

NY/NJ here, but I felt the same way after visiting Tokyo. Another metro system I was really impressed with was Taipei’s; the trains were clean, safe and ran frequently.

It was so depressing coming home to our public transportation, especially because the airport connections are poor and make you cranky immediately after deboarding.

Even with the decreased ridership right now some stations and lines remain congested, and the narrower platforms can feel unsafe when there’s crowding. There’s a persistent stank during this swampy time of year and a layer of dust, skin cells and/or unidentified garbage particles on the tracks that cleaning doesn’t ever really fix. There’s just more vomit and pee to clean in the first place. Okay I’m being a little dramatic but it really do be like that sometimes.

Sure the newest stations are nicer, but the cost and the time it takes is crazy. And it’s impossible to retrofit most of the existing stations with new technology so we’re stuck having to work around this old infrastructure. Meanwhile, there are a lot of neighborhoods that are underserved. At least we finally have contactless readers. The technology has been around for almost two decades but better late than never? Sorry, this is becoming a huge rant but public transportation in the US is such a joke.

We got back from Tokyo recently as well! There's a very apparent difference in culture that I think contributes to this. I'm not Japanese nor am I super experienced with Japanese culture so I can't comfortablely speak on what those differences are. However we also can't ignore the fact that public transit in general is massively underfunded across the states, not just in Chicago. We're car-centric first, and public-transit-based like, fourth is the way I see it. Not that I'm happy about that ofc, I take the train and the bus everywhere I can, but that's just the reality of the situation right now. Tokyo's train system is very obviously much better funded than Chicago's, and the infrastructure is built to support that.