Is NYC a good place to live when it comes to public transportation?

It's about as good as it gets!

Fact: New York is the only major U.S. city in which the majority of residents do not own cars.

Fact: New York is the safest big city in the U.S.

The MTA has a vast web of trains and buses to cover just about every imaginable part of the five boroughs. Some trips aren't the most convenient (northeast Queens to southeast Queens, for example), but for the most part, it works beautifully.

It's cheap, it's fast, and it is fairly easy.

Between the subway, the buses, the SIRR, the LIRR, PATH, the AirTrain, NJ Transit, and Metro-North, New York makes it very easy to live here and get around via mass transit.

EDIT: As for where to live, all five boroughs have some good neighborhoods, some bad neighborhoods, and many average neighborhoods. I'd say Staten Island is LEAST convenient for mass transit. Manhattan is MOST convenient. The other three are still very convenient.

As others have written NYC has a fantastic, extensive public transit system. Let me however add a few points: In the outer boroughs not all bus lines run 24 hrs-many don't so while the subway is 24 hrs., if you need a bus to or from a subway station in the late hours when the bus route doesn't operate, you'll need to take a cab or livery service. In Manhattan some routes also don't run 24 hrs but in Manh. you would be able nonetheless to get to the neighborhood you want in the late hours by subway or a bus route that does run and is nearby and you could probably walk the rest of the way or of course hail a cab.

In the US, New York is definitely a world apart when it come to public transportation compared to all the other major cities.

If you live in New York City, especially in Manhattan, you have no problem reaching anything you need either on foot, by bus, subway, train or cab.

Even living around Manhattan you don't necessarily need a car. If you cannot afford Manhattan (and most college students I know can't), you can move to the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens or (nice for Jersey people) Hoboken or Jersey City.

Both those areas are connected to the Path train and you can get anywhere you want as well.

Between the commuter train system from New jersey, Long Island, & Conn. and the NYC Subway system that goes almost everywhere in the five borough area, 24 hours a day, the public transportation system is perhaps the best in the United States.

If you want to live in Manhattan, forget about having a car, unless you want to pay a small fortune to garage it. Brooklyn and Queens residents rely mostly on mass transit to get to work in Manhattan. Unless of course if you work in Brooklyn or Queens. Check out Greenpoint, Brooklyn or Williamsburg There are a lot of young people settling there from out of state. Another good choice would be either Astoria, Queens or Bayside, Queens (close to the railroad which is a 20 min. ride into Penn Station).

The only places that I have found better public transit is in Japan and Hong Kong.

As far as the guy from Toronto, NYC transit is extensive, it's "complicated" because it's extensive. Being extensive makes it one of the BEST in the world. If it only had a few lines like Toronto, that would make it inadequate.

yes its probably the best place in the world Moscow may have a better Public Transport system, I've known people from New York that have never owned or driven a car in their life because they don't need one

Definitely. New York is one of the cities with the best transportation and very convenient to travel around.

Public transport is wonderful here. I know many people who have lived here all their lives and have never learned how to drive.

Yes it's got the best public transportation, you can get anywhere provided you have time - some places take twice as long to get to than if you just drove there.

Queen or Brooklyn isn't so bad...