Why does Bulgaria, the poorest country in the EU, have a safer train system than NYC, the richest place on the globe?

I’m in Bulgaria. It’s the poorest country in the European Union—and the most corrupt. My friends get livid recounting how agency A was supposed to build some bridge, and then just siphoned off tax money to a mafioso and the bridge is never built.

But I took the Sofia subway today. It’s clean. It’s on time. The intercoms work perfectly and the announcements come in Bulgarian followed by slightly accented English.

To prevent people from falling or being pushed onto the tracks, in busy stations a light metal barrier descends when the train approaches and leaves.

To help prevent fare evasion, train employees do occasional walk throughs and check people’s metro cards. But they are not police and do not have guns. If they find someone without a ticket they issue a fine.

Again. This isn’t a Nordic nation. It’s a former Soviet bloc country, rotted through with corruption and government malfeasance and abuse during the communist era, and then ravaged by rapacious capitalism in the 1990s. My parents and I were in the US by then and I remember grandparents who proudly, reluctantly, asked for money because their pensions had been gutted and they couldn’t afford heat. Then rose the Mafia state and decades of corruption that continues today. After lifetimes of this, the people are not prone to trusting elected officials—the conspiracy theories that circulate, especially among older people, would make Q-Anon believers blush.

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New York City is the financial capitol of the world, and in a deep blue state.

A man was shot on the train between Park Slope—one of the richest neighborhoods in the city—and lower Manhattan, where he was meeting friends for brunch.

A woman was pushed onto the tracks and killed this year, because unlike in Bulgaria, there are no barriers between the platform and the tracks. Her assailant suffered from schizophrenia and had cycled in and out of the city’s inadequate mental health services, jails, and the streets. He had once told a mental health provider that he was worried that he would push a woman onto the tracks. A few years later, he did.

The intercoms go “CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE!” and suddenly you’re on an express train to a stop 15 stops from your destination. We all know the trains run late, stop in the middle of a terrifying dark tunnel and the intercom goes, “CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE!” and you don’t know if you’ll be sitting there for 20 seconds or 20 minutes.

To prevent fare evasion, NYPD officers station themselves at gates and manhandle teenagers who jump the turnstile, which not infrequently leads to violent, traumatizing altercations. Recently, Mayor Eric Adams has ramped up efforts to make the subway “safe.” Yet, when a shooter attempted to turn a morning commute into a blood bath, he slipped away once police came to the scene and was only caught thanks to eagle-eyed bodega clerks and also the fact that he called and told police exactly where he was.

That’s in part because the Mayor’s plan is not about public safety—it’s about hassling homeless people who sleep on the train, because their only options are, the train, hellish shelters, or the streets.

Bulgaria has many problems. The way the country treats its Roma minority population would make Tucker Carlson blush. Seemingly sane people turn into … well, Tucker Carlson, if you point out that maybe some Roma might steal, not because it’s “in their nature” but because they’re locked out of every legitimate avenue for success or survival since birth. The corruption is in fact, rampant and insane.

It’s definitely not perfect! (though FWIW it’s beautiful and cheap and the food is delicious and the people are good-looking and there are Greek, Roman and Thracian ruins scattered all over the country, so tourists should come! But not too many—it’s also great because there are very few tourists).

I guess I wonder why the poorest country in the European Union managed to invest in a light metal barrier to prevent people from falling or getting pushed onto the tracks of their subway. While, New York City, one of the richest, richest places in the world, seems to respond to problems by throwing more armed police at them.

Priorities?