I've also lived in both New York and Berlin. I completely agree that the US has a more powerful "car culture," but the cities are very different -- New York is incredibly dense while Berlin is pretty spread out. Wikipedia says New York has 10,756 people per km2 while Berlin has 4,000 [0]. They face different issues in developing transit infrastructure.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin