At human speeds: walk, bike, tractor, hitch a ride on a lorry (max speed 45mph), horse. Trains are useful for connecting longer distances at specific times of the day (commuting). Highways create an artificial monopoly on travel. You cannot easily travel along them, or cross them if you can't drive over 45mph. This speed is only getting higher.

There are studies showing that travel has actually gone down in areas like Mexico with the addition of modern Highways. The poor just can't participate.

I didn't mention small towns. My concern is primarily with the large cities in the United States that have functionally useless or second-class public transportation systems. Places like Phoenix, Houston, and Los Angeles that collectively house tens of millions of people in sufficient density for public transit, but lack effective systems due to poor planning, corruption, and lack of creative problem solving.

Of course there are use-cases for cars, nobody suggested that there aren't. The problem is that the United States in particular has assumed that every transportation issue is best solved with cars.