The famous legend of NYC is that they had the vision to build infrastructure beyond current needs.

Now, it's trendy to view any investment by democratic government as wasteful, and to reduce the taxes by which the community makes that investment to nothing.

What will happen to future generations, who have us as their forbears rather than the visionary New Yorkers.

There's plenty of investments. It's called suburban sprawl, and some people even think it's a tax ponzi scheme.

2 of the 3 subway systems in NYC were built by private companies.

It was only later that all were merged into one publicly-managed one.

That was also when expansion basically stopped.

I agree, which is my underlying point: they don’t want to expand! The lack of public transit is a problem plenty of people have been yelling about for decades, as you mentioned. Developers, citizens, and the city council have all proven over the years they are unwilling to do what needs to be done to make expansion possible.

> You know what Manhattan has that SF doesn't. Subways.

Well, yes. And deep bedrock and fairly stable geology that makes them possible.

If Japan (earthquakes) and the Netherlands (built on swamp) and Shanghai (swamp) can do it so can San Francisco.

Well and there is also the old Bart tunnel and more modern Central Subway. And then there are the subway tunnels they have built/building in Los Angeles.

Snippets I've read over the years seem to say that subway tunnels and deep foundations don't tend to fail in earthquakes because they to move with the ground around them. And because they are already structurally strong.

Basically the lack of mass transit to support higher density is because of lack of willingness to pay for it. Unwillingness to pay for public infrastructure is due American economic ideology. Not anything specific to San Francisco.

Shitty soil and earthquakes in combination is a bad combo.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/earthquake-expert-san-fra...