Car is so much more convenient.

(Okay before you read this, this assumption is for Cities only. Rural areas do not apply at all lol. Suburbs are also still part of cities)

This is actually an effect of creating a car centric infrastructure and city planning revolving around roads and parking.

You have to imagine for a moment what an entire city would look like without cars as the core transportation method. For starters, suburbs wouldn’t be a thing, everything would be spaced about 4-8x closer, large supermarkets would be rare, especially grocery stores, pedestrian and cyclist traffic would be the most common form of transportation, and then busses/streetcars, and then trains.

You would likely be getting groceries more frequently, but it would be an average 7 minute walk to your local grocery store, and a flat 3 minute cycle if you don’t want to carry any groceries and put in even less effort than walking. Busses and trains would be reserved for mostly commercial traffic like traveling to work, city center, or other neighborhoods.

There are plenty of real life examples of cities and entire countries that are developed like this. Netherlands is always brought up, but places like Sydney follow this planning despite also having a lot of cars. Even several US cities were like this in the early 1900-1940s.

The reason busses and trains absolutely suck in the USA, is that it is treated as secondary transport. Busses are rarely running with enough frequency to make them viable, and they have to travel the same distance and use the same roads as cars, because every neighborhood was designed to accommodate cars first. There should be almost no need to get on a Bus to do grocery shopping.

Same logic applies to trains. Lots of people drive first to take the train, which makes it much less effective. Also the USA hasn’t properly invested into rail for like 70 years, so every system you see is slow as hell and never on time.

Walkable cities are even better. I used to drive daily and then I moved close enough to walk to work with conveniently located grocery stores. Didn’t drive much at all for years and THAT was convenient. Never sit in traffic and just stop in the store and pick up a few things on your way home from work. As long as I have to be working that is as close to livin’ the dream as possible for me.

Cars don’t scale.

As soon as there is real traffic, cars become inefficient trains.

If you’re somewhere that doesn’t have much traffic yet, it’ll seem fine, but that doesn’t always last.

If you can make a bicycle work, that’s much healthier and cheaper to own and operate for all those people that can’t afford a car, or don’t want to be indentured to it. Cargo bikes even work fine for groceries, depending on your family size.

It has a bad reputation cause it isn’t well funded, I do agree buses aren’t perfect but in my city they come often enough and there is actually plenty of space to rest so it is not a traumatic experience

Besides the fact that underground trains take care of most transportation

Driving these days is just being stuck in traffic for an hour at a time then wasting 20 minutes searching for a parking spot and being late for work.

It’s not “I want public transportation because public transportation is fun”, it’s “I want good public transportation because it’s better for the environment and society and urban planning and etc etc etc”