You're sadly mistaken if you think a New York, one of the largest and busiest cities in human existence, is "just another large City", and that the solution to their transportation woes is to just lock it down and work on it.
Shutting the subway down at night for maintenance and running night buses as a replacement is a pretty straightforward method that other, similarly large cities are using successfully.
it's extremely small compared to population of Beijing or shanghai for instance and Beijing shut down subway around 11PM. but yeah people in NY are the only ones working in night, common, you really believe it or you don't have passport?
NYC is unique as it's always be the center of the universe, even it's just 8M people live here, and other cities, like Tokyo/Hong Kong/Beijing/Shanghai has more population that it
It's another huge City. Besides having a horribly mismanaged public transport, it's not unique.
Except that it's, you know, the center of the universe of course. ;-)