[mijamo]

Why so big though? I lived in a 25 000 people town in Sweden and did not need a car more than a few week ends per year. There was 5 bus lines for local transport, and long distance busses and trains with quite high frequency.

And that's not taking into account the fact that bicycle is a very viable way to move around in cities < 200 000 inhabitants.

I have actually never owned a car, I just rent some once in a while to go out somewhere where regular transports don't get me. I have lived in Sweden, France and Spain, in 10 cities from 25 000 to 12 million inhabitants. Never felt restricted. I actually feel much more restricted when I drive because I have to worry about parking, which is horrible in both Paris and Stockholm. Many people I know, even in rural Sweden or France, don't own a car because it is just super costly and the benefit is not worth it. It's very much a generation thing tough because my friends are mostly around 26-32 whereas nearly all the person I know over 35 owns a car, even if they don't actually have that much money and sometimes complain about it.

[Silhouette]

You've almost answered your own question, I think. Providing mass transit on popular routes at peak times is relatively easy. It's more difficult when you need to get someone from A to B that is 100 miles away, and then back again the same day. It's more difficult when you are getting someone from A to B at the start of the evening, but their shift finishes at 4am and then they need to get home again.

To provide a viable transport network, operating full-time with competitive journey times, without making a prohibitive financial loss or being environmentally unfriendly, you need a critical mass of people using each service you run. That generally means you need a high enough population density over a large enough urban area that almost all routes become "main routes" and almost all times become "busy times".