Using the word "salary", and talking about paying cabs to drive to buses shows that you ignoring the reality of a huge segment of the working population, who work hourly, and have childcare needs.
No, I'm not. I was giving two conditional scenarios, and dismissing the "salary" one precisely because the people you're telling me I'm ignoring are unlikely to work in those locations.
To reiterate:
IF you are not working in an office park off an interstate near an affluent suburb, most mid-sized American cities have enough transit to get by.
IF you are working in an office park off an interstate near an affluent suburb, then you're probably making enough that you can stitch together a combination of public transit and taxis to get to work from a low-rent area.
And yeah, long commutes suck when you're paying for child care. Which is why a lot of people choose a child care facility close to work.
Basically, my point was that I know a lot of Europeans whose commute involves > 1/2 mile of walking. And also a lot of Americans who live in cities that "don't have any public transit" because they have to walk 1/2 - 1 mile to get to a stop that takes them directly to work.
I'm not saying American public transit doesn't need to improve. Just that if Americans always demand door-to-door service, then public transit will never be good enough. And, more over, will always suck because that's an impossible demand.
