I grew up in a very rural, car based environment. The nearest place to eat out was a gas station that happened to make great (if unorthodox) pizza and bbq. It was about 30 minutes by car at a steady ~100kph to get there. My wife grew up in a dense urban environment with tons of public transit options. When we were first dating and visiting my parents' home, she'd get confused when everybody started talking about where to go get dinner when clearly nobody was even remotely hungry. A few visits later she finally figured it out, it took 30 minutes to an hour to get wherever we decided so you had to anticipate your hunger by that much.

Later on, I moved into the city, and though I loved some aspects of it, there were others I hated. Walking everywhere within a few blocks was great for example. We could actually think about where we wanted to eat while we were in the process of walking out the door and after we started feeling hungry! (mindblowing)

But other aspects simply sucked. Mass transit, in general, is terrible in most of the U.S. To get to the local subway (so I could get to work) from our apartment, I had 3 choices:

1) A 5 minute drive

2) A 30+ minute walk over sometimes unsafe walking areas (overpass with no sidewalk, couple other muddy/dirty no-sidewalk areas)

3) An hour long bus ride with two transfers. The buses never kept to schedule so a 20 minute wait to get on and at each transfer wasn't uncommon.

Once I got on the train, it was a pretty easy 45 minute ride with 1 transfer and then an easy 15 minute walk from the station to my office.

So say I wanted to take mass transit to get to work. I'm looking at up to ~3 hours 1 way. If everything clicks into place, it's still a minimum ~2 hour ride 1 way. These days we have google to help us find a route, and a quick check of my old route shows an approximately 1.5-2 hour commute via mass transit.

If I cut the trip to the subway down by driving, I'd either have to pay for parking (~$10/day) or get a ride from my wife.

If I walked, I'd probably get my work clothes (suit) dirty and endanger myself.

The alternative, to just drive into the office was a 1 hour drive with a $20/day parking fee.

The public transit experience sucked so bad, and consumed so much of my day, that I eventually just opted to drive myself in. I at least had the flexibility during the day to go places I couldn't walk to for lunch.

This wasn't NYC however. I've spent a few weeks here and there in NYC for work and pleasure, and almost always I just take the subway. I don't go to the outer boroughs much, and when I do I've never strayed far from a subway station -- I'm sure If I bothered to integrate the bus system into my life I'd be even happier. When I was in London, I did exactly that and the integrated system worked great (even if it was expensive). edit btw, does anybody else think it's weird NYC hasn't integrated either airport into the subway system?

I find the experience in NYC generally really good. I've done the same in London, Seoul, Barcelona and Paris and the only times I wish I had a car was when I was shopping and had to haul a bunch of groceries home on the local subway. In other cities more like where I live, with similar levels of service, I usually just use a car.

I was recently in Orlando and we decided to use the local bus system instead of a car. It was...okay. But bus service was so infrequent that if you missed your transfer you'd easily wait another 30-45 minutes for the next bus.

So to me there's kind of an uncanny valley mass transit falls into. If it's hyper dense like NYC, I think it's fantastic. The need for a car just isn't there most of the time, and it's cheap enough and the service is frequent enough that you don't end up standing around doing nothing for 30 minutes and hopefully don't have to make a half dozen transfers. There's a few cases where I really want a car, but you usually end up rethinking how your life functions and end up getting rid of lots of those (more frequent shopping and smaller groceries), but some are a still a pain (big packages). Fortunately, services like Zipcar (or just calling a cab) usually fills in those gaps.

However, most places are not ultra-large, ultra-dense first world cities and building a comparable system in those smaller cities just isn't economically feasible in general. Bus systems are too complicated compared to trams or trains, and without knowing your entire route and schedule ahead of time are hard to impossible to figure out off the cuff, and frequent stops means it takes forever to get anywhere. So even if they have the appearance of a robust mass transit system, practically they don't function in the same way a Tokyo or NYC or Paris does.

So I found it cool that was possible to live where I live, and do it without a car, but it's also possible in the sens that L.A. and NYC are within "walkable" distance from each other if you don't mind walking for 38 days nonstop.

note

today I live in a new style suburb. My house is an easy 5-10 minute walk to a pretty large array of shopping, restaurants, entertainment and services. Comparable to what you'd likely find within an easy 5-10 minute walk in most urban environments. I haven't taken my car shopping at my local grocery in about 2 months. My doctor, a movie theater, etc. are all walkable. There's a commuter bus lot in my neighborhood as well and for not too much money, I can take it into the city, it takes special lanes much of the way and turns a 2 hour drive into a 45 minute bus ride with a 20 minute easy walk.

I'm also a 20 minute drive from the nearest subway stop and the line is expanding in my direction. Hopefully in a few years it'll be a 5-10 minute drive, giving me tons of transit options.

So I kind of get the best of both worlds.