Original sentence: A long history of political disinterest had by the 1990s left Auckland with a substantially underused and underfunded public transport system (as compared to other cities of similar size but also higher density in much of the Western world)
Edited sentence: A long history of political disinterest  had by the 1990s left Auckland with a substantially underused and underfunded  public transport system (as compared to other cities of similar size in much of the Western world)