[greggman]

Subways not running between 1am and 5am seems like a good thing to me if it means they can use that time to maintain the tracks and stations.

The trains and subways in Tokyo are amazing, clean, on time but they stop at 1am and start up around 5am. That sucks for you if you don't want to cab it home after around 12am. As a night owl I love it though as it means there are tons of night venues that are open until at least 5am and I just add the cab fare into my "entertainment budget" if I don't intend to stay out all night.

[TuringNYC]

So the problem with NYC is often poor/no service all weekend long. I encountered my issue last weekend at 10pm on Friday when I got into the city via train.

> just add the cab fare into my "entertainment budget"

This sounds OK, but now think about the working class who have to get to work, or work night shift (at those bars where you're going), or work on weekends, or night school, etc. They cant just take cabs all the time. Uber/Lyft pool has been an expensive but somewhat reachable stop-gap but yellow cabs, especially to far-off outer boroughs where working class live is simply untenable.

Unlike Paris, there is a bit of a different "social contract" in NYC where generations of working class have depended upon, come to expect, and carved their lives/jobs around the expectation of a 24-7 subway system...often not for convenience but for sustenance.

[simonsarris]

Similar in Paris. Subways cease between 1am and 5am (approx), and instead there are night busses (Noctilien)

The streets are not crowded between 1am and 5am so night busses make a lot of sense. Then of course you can do scheduled maintenance on the subways.

[tk75x]

A similar situation exists in London. When I was traveling there for school, we had Oyster cards that let us travel on the tube trains and buses but the underground transport would shut down sometime after midnight and when we stayed out late, a bus was usually available.