...in warm climates. Nobody wants to walk to or from a bus stop in -30 degree winds if they can get an alternative, and most won't scooter or bike in freezing conditions either.
I stay in Boston, and winter really isn't as big a problem for public transport as people make it out to be. I can't think of many cities outside Canada/Russia that have worse weather (cold, high precipitation and windy).
If anything, owning a car in the winter is a massive pain as driving is riskier, involves daily drive-thru shovelling and regular de-icing that gets irritating rather fast. Biking does get quite difficult for longer trips, but people still use bikes (owned or rental city bikes) for short distance trips to the grocery stores within 10 minute distances.
I recognize that this only works in dense enough cities. But, if the city is dense enough to have good public transportation in the summer, then it is dense enough for public transportation to be sufficient over the winter.
Not sure what the percentage is, but it's not a small number.
This is the map of areas classified as Köppen Humid Continental. It covers almost all of the populated areas of Canada and the northern United States, as well as parts of Europe and Korea, northern Japan and northern China.
Most northern US geographies experience at least a few days of -30°C (-22°F) weather every winter (even coastal places like NYC -- I remember it was freezing in lower Manhattan ca Feb 2016). However it's not as bad as it looks, as these temperatures are wind-chill temperatures and usually occur in the wee hours of the morning.
Where do you want to go? Living in a city center right now. It's hard for me to find a thing I DON'T have in a radius of 4km, which is a reasonable walking distance.
The parent was specifically talking about walking rather than taking public transit. Boston has a particularly dense core and yes, so long as you confine yourself to the original Boston core (North End, Beacon Hill, Financial District, maybe add the Back Bay), you don't really need to use public transit. But I'm probably not going to walk from there to Harvard Square in Cambridge, Symphony Hall, or even the Seaport on a regular basis although I could.
I'm not familiar with Boston. But I think NY and Paris are actually too big for everything to be walkable. In smaller cities that's definitely possible. I used to live in Bristol, UK (pop. ~500k) and if you lived centrally then you get pretty much anywhere within 30 minutes of walking.
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If anything, owning a car in the winter is a massive pain as driving is riskier, involves daily drive-thru shovelling and regular de-icing that gets irritating rather fast. Biking does get quite difficult for longer trips, but people still use bikes (owned or rental city bikes) for short distance trips to the grocery stores within 10 minute distances.
I recognize that this only works in dense enough cities. But, if the city is dense enough to have good public transportation in the summer, then it is dense enough for public transportation to be sufficient over the winter.