Building your life around transit means making choices. Building your life around a car means making choices too. If the quoted TCO of owning a car at $12,000/year is accurate, moving some of that spending to housing could make transit friendly housing more viable.
I don't think this poster was calling for removal of cars or whatever, just pointing out that it's possible to build your life without them. For at least some people.
There's certainly tradeoffs. Where I live, I could do many things with transit, but hours of operation are very limited, and direct routes are very limited. Sometimes, I can take transit to the airport and it makes sense, but on my most recent trip, getting to the airport would have been very stressful as the ferry canceled most of the morning runs on short notice and AFAIK, there's no reasonable alternative route without a private car. On the way home, there's no transit on my side of the ferry on a Sunday, and even if there was, it ends hours before I get there. If I needed to build my life around transit, I'd need to fly only during limited hours and not have any scheduling mishaps, spend nights in hotels a ferry away from my home, or move to a more transit accessible home.
At the same time, I don't complain that NYC doesn't accomadate my life built around cars. I choose a life built around cars, and so I avoid built up urban areas whenever possible. I hate paying for parking, so going into the city needs a good reason, and I would never want to live there.
Some people, when you say “you know it’s possible to get by without a car”, take it as a personal affront. No amount of evidence is sufficient. Any evidence provided is disregarded as “sure maybe for you but real people can’t possibly live in such a weird way”.
The person you’re responding to is one of those people. Don’t waste your time.
I don't think this poster was calling for removal of cars or whatever, just pointing out that it's possible to build your life without them. For at least some people.
There's certainly tradeoffs. Where I live, I could do many things with transit, but hours of operation are very limited, and direct routes are very limited. Sometimes, I can take transit to the airport and it makes sense, but on my most recent trip, getting to the airport would have been very stressful as the ferry canceled most of the morning runs on short notice and AFAIK, there's no reasonable alternative route without a private car. On the way home, there's no transit on my side of the ferry on a Sunday, and even if there was, it ends hours before I get there. If I needed to build my life around transit, I'd need to fly only during limited hours and not have any scheduling mishaps, spend nights in hotels a ferry away from my home, or move to a more transit accessible home.
At the same time, I don't complain that NYC doesn't accomadate my life built around cars. I choose a life built around cars, and so I avoid built up urban areas whenever possible. I hate paying for parking, so going into the city needs a good reason, and I would never want to live there.