Outside of a very small number of major metro areas, cities in America are not livable without a car.
And I say that as someone who really, really despises how required car ownership is, and who has spent a lot of time trying to find alternatives.
Even in reasonably large metro areas where there is a decent bus system, and a passable metro (Atlanta, in this case) a nice E-bike is still nowhere near enough to replace my car.
I've managed to replace the car for my daily commute with a ~40 minute Marta ride, and an additional 20 minutes on the bike (Would be an additional 40+ if I used the buses), but the metro doesn't come within 20 miles of either of my parents houses, nor does it get me to my brother who lives in Athens, GA. Nor does it get me anywhere close to my grandparents. I wouldn't have been able to visit my now wife while dating without a car.
I'm assuming you're not American, but if you haven't visited for a while, I suspect you're just wrong about any sense of scale you might have. Atlanta alone has a metro area of 8400 square miles. Houston is 10,000 square miles.
My wife's family has this problem. They're from Taiwan. When I first visited they warned me about a long car ride to see some family in the country. Long meant 40 minutes.
40 minutes barely gets you across Atlanta. 2 hours gets you to Athens if traffic is decent. 2 hours 30 minutes the a different direction will get you to my family in north GA (and Atlanta is already well in the north half of GA). I can drive south at 80 mph for 4 freaking hours and still be in GA.
> Outside of a very small number of major metro areas, cities in America are not livable without a car.
I guess NYC is one of the "very small number of major metro areas" and yet OP used it to show how you can't live comfortably without a car if you make $2k/month.
I understand how it can be a necessity to have a car, but we are talking about living, so before a car you need a roof, food, water, healthcare and heating.
Based on what I've seen those last few months, there are (a lot of) people that owns a car but don't have a roof or can't buy food or can't have healthcare.
So to me it's really weird to link "living comfortably" and "having a car".
> So to me it's really weird to link "living comfortably" and "having a car".
It depends on where you live. In the vast majority of the US, you simply cannot "live comfortably" without a car. You will be locked in your house/apartment unable to really do much other than get Amazon and some chain store food delivery options. There simply isn't infrastructure available for not having a car to be an option. In these areas, a car is worth more than a roof over your head if you still need it to get to work and other engagements.
In the few major cities in the US where you don't need a car - expenses are crazy. Chicago is considered cheap for a major US city, and is one of perhaps 3 to 6 cities you could say you don't need a vehicle to live in. Even here, you are spending considerable amount of money to be in a decent neighborhood within comfortable walking distance to reliable mass transit. You trade your $300/mo car payment for at least that much more in rent.
Cars are unfortunately a "good deal" in most of the US. They are incredibly cheap compared to many areas of the world, and the vast majority of our population requires them to economically sustain themselves. Very few times does the math work out in the other direction - a $3500 beater car is pretty cheap to maintain when it enables you to pay $1500/mo less in rent if you ignore all other quality of life metrics.
I live in Metro Atlanta (midtown) without a car, and I don't find it too bad. I'm walking distance from work and various amenities. Grocery delivery and Lyft makes it a whole lot easier, and the ~150$ a month saved not owning a car gets you a lot of Lyft, or a rental car if needed.
Camping and visiting family is definitely a bit tricky though.
You have to realize, using miles to convey the "sense of scale" to non-Americans is ironic because... we can't be bothered to understand how much 10000 square "miles" actually is.
For those with high school math ability, it's doable to notice that 10000 sqm is the area of a square with side 100 m, so about a patch of 160 km by 160 km.
Outside of a very small number of major metro areas, cities in America are not livable without a car.
And I say that as someone who really, really despises how required car ownership is, and who has spent a lot of time trying to find alternatives.
Even in reasonably large metro areas where there is a decent bus system, and a passable metro (Atlanta, in this case) a nice E-bike is still nowhere near enough to replace my car.
I've managed to replace the car for my daily commute with a ~40 minute Marta ride, and an additional 20 minutes on the bike (Would be an additional 40+ if I used the buses), but the metro doesn't come within 20 miles of either of my parents houses, nor does it get me to my brother who lives in Athens, GA. Nor does it get me anywhere close to my grandparents. I wouldn't have been able to visit my now wife while dating without a car.
I'm assuming you're not American, but if you haven't visited for a while, I suspect you're just wrong about any sense of scale you might have. Atlanta alone has a metro area of 8400 square miles. Houston is 10,000 square miles.
My wife's family has this problem. They're from Taiwan. When I first visited they warned me about a long car ride to see some family in the country. Long meant 40 minutes.
40 minutes barely gets you across Atlanta. 2 hours gets you to Athens if traffic is decent. 2 hours 30 minutes the a different direction will get you to my family in north GA (and Atlanta is already well in the north half of GA). I can drive south at 80 mph for 4 freaking hours and still be in GA.