[alberto467]

That's not the full story, you're right that they "could switch", but would they actually?

Good, working and efficient public transit still means having significantly less comfort compared to having your private vehicle. Pretty much the only exception is using the metro in a congested downtown area at peak traffic (still, your metro experience will also be degraded by the peak traffic), or perhaps if parking your vehicle will be very difficult. And i say this as someone in a rather big city in Europe who is currently only using public transit. And there is a lot of stuff that i'd like to do but i can't do since i currently don't have access to a car or motorbike.

People don't just want "useful", at least the majority of people in developed countries also want "comfortable", and "nice", and "easy", and "enjoyable". A peak-hour metro ride or missing your tram by one minute is none of that.

[bigfishrunning]

I would settle for "available". Where I live, i have a 40 minute commute to work by car. I live in a suburb of a midsize american city.

When i bought my house, i looked into public transportation options. Instead of a 40 minute car ride, i could drive for 5 minutes and then take 3 hours (and 2 bus transfers) to get to my office by bus.

I would love to get some reading done on my commute, and would be willing to spend an hour on a bus or train instead of 40 minutes fighting traffic in my car, but it's just not really feasable. I think this situation is extremely common.

[bluGill]

That is what I'm getting at. Most cities in the US don't have a useful transit system.

though your 40 minute by car commute is something that is unlikely something any invsetment will ever make reasonable.

[alberto467]

Having lived in multiple european cities with decent to good public transport, a 40 minute car commute almost always means you live outside the city. In that case, your public transport experience will just suffer a lot (public transport is more efficient with higher densities of living).

Being outside the city you'll have fewer vectors with less frequency (more than 30mins in between), which will get you in the city somewhere, and from that you'll take city-local public transport to your final destination.

I'd say in this case the 40 min car commute turns into 1h 20, with some luck too.

[bluGill]

If the next bus/tram isn't almost there when you miss the previous then it isn't nearly as useful.

there are things you can't do with transit. However nearly everyone is living in a family - so keep the truck to tow the boat, but get rid of the other cars that you won't need if transit is good. That is a much more reasonably goal that transit can aim for. A few like you won't own a car/truck at all, but most won't need to go that far