Be careful in generalizing!

I had the privilege in visiting three cities in US and try their metro trains. From there, I learn to be careful in drawing conclusions too fast and in building a perception based on my imagination or what people said. The first city to visit is Washington DC. I heard that it is worse than New York City and so I had a low expectation. It turns out that they have a card called Smart Trip that we can tap just like in Singapore. And the train was decent. I also only tried short distances as the maximum I went is less than five stations.

Then I went to New York City with a higher expectation. It is surprising to see that the metro subway is dark and not clean. I also feel uncomfortable with their notification system and pathways. It is hard, at least in the station near my hotel, to find out how long to wait for the train or the train schedule. I think there is none. So if there are two options of going to the same place, we will not know which one to take based on the arrival time. After we decide just by the fact whether they are express or local train, we also do not know how long more to wait. The pathway is also troublesome. There is no escalator or lift. And the worse part is that sometimes the entrance determines the direction. So we need to pay again if we are on the platform with wrong direction as we need to exit, cross the road outside and enter again. This is significant as their system is a one fixed fare regardless the distance. Also the card system is a bit outdated as they still use the filmsy card with magnetic stripe to swipe.

This is where the danger of generalizing lies. Since I thought New York City is supposed to be better than Washington DC in terms of the subway, I lose hope on the system and thought that in US, the train system is worse than other countries like in Singapore or the few cities in Europe I have visited. So I have low expectation when I go to Los Angeles. This is because there is even people who do not know that Los Angeles have metro train! The perception I heard before is that the public transportation of New York City is good while we need to drive in Los Angeles. It turns out I was totally wrong. Los Angeles has a card called Tap - which yes, we can just tap instead of swipe. The card is solid just like in Washington DC and Singapore. And yey, the metro station is nice and bright together with good timing notification. It is even better that they give two timing for each direction, the coming train and the subsequent train. So at least we have a rough idea on how long to wait if we miss the train (assuming we are on the entrance and we cannot run fast).

So thanks to the metro train experience, I was reminded to be careful not to immediately trust my own perception or what I heard, as well as not too generalize too fast in drawing conclusion for something bigger like the country experience just based on one or few cities.