Jim, most US cities (except NY) are not London where for a pound forty you can get to most destinations in 20 minutes or less. Just to illustrate - Baltimore one has one light rail line that connects the train station with the airport, and 1/2 subway line that connects the Johns Hopkins Hospital to the suburbs. The travel time from downtown to the airport is about 30 minutes (but the distance is about a third of that between Heathrow and downtown London, which takes about 1 hour on the underground) - if, ad that is a really big IF, you happen to live close to the light rail line. I happen to live about a mile and a half from that line and getting to the light rail takes me and additional 30-35 minutes on the bus or walking (same speed) or about 5-10 minutes by taxi.
I nonetheless use rail every time i go to the airport. The subway is mostly useless beacuse it goes only to the burbs. I use a short section of it on Fridays when I go to a downtown pub, or when I want a reliable connection to light rail.
The distance between my home and the Johns Hopkins campus is about 3 miles. If I wanted to use public transportation (buses only) it would take me about 1 hour and at least two buses plus a long walk to get there - same as walking all the way. By car, I get there in about 10-12 minutes.
I live in the downtown area. The closest food supermarket is located about 2 miles - about 40-50 minutes by bus, or about 8-10 minutes by car. Other stores (clothing, appliances) are loacted aboput 5-10 mileas away in the suburbs. Almost impossible to get there by means other than the car.
The rail "system" is efficient but designed exlusively for the suburban commuters, urban dwellers have no use of it other than going to the airport. The worst aspects of the bus transportation are the travel time (which is dismally low) and unreliability - it is not that unusual to wait 40-50 minutes for a bus. An additional problems is routing - most bus lines are spread out so people could not take advantage of several lines converging on major routes, and designed to bring people in and out the city rather than between major city detinations. Things are so bad that there are no city-wide system maps available, suburbanites do not need them (in those rare cases they use public transit they depend ona single line) and city dwellers do not count.
There are also two rail systems in Baltimore. The commuter rail between B'more and Washington DC operating in part, on freight tracks, and with freight trains having a priority, and does not operate on weekend. Amtrak offers a decent but very pricey connection between Baltimore and Washington or New York. Round trip to New York (180 miles) is between $130 and $200, a round trip to Washington (about 40 miles) is aboyt $40. Beynd these two destination, the speed comes to a crawl - it takes about 9 hours to get from B'more to Boston (about 400 miles) at the price of $140. A cheap airline connection is about $100 round trip, driving takes about 7 hours and about $60 in gas and tolls.
There is no public transportation from B'more to Pennsylvania (except to Philly which is en route to New York), so when I want ot visit my friend, I have no choice but to drive.
It looks like our so-called 'elected representatives' made all what is humanly possible to disable public transit system without openly shutting it down and force people to buy more cars. Those ratfuckers bend backward to spend as much money on the car system as possible, whether needed or not. Last weekend, I took a short trip to York, PA and noticed two things: my tax dollars being used to re-pave a perfectly level and smooth roadway, and to to build sound-walls to shiled individual suburban homes from highway noise. Now, that is a generous welfare handout.
The East Coast has a relatively well developed public transit system, by the US standards, that is. Things can get much worse when you go inland and West.
I could go on and on, but I think you should see the barbarity of the US transportation system (outside New York) by yourself, before criticizing people for using cars in this fucking jeder-fuer-sich-und-Gott-gegen-alles country.
wojtek