I like cars. It’s comfy and it’s freedom. I don’t care if you have the fastest, cleanest, cheapest public transport in the world. I don’t want to ride with other people.
There are still plenty of drivers in NYC; one of the big plusses of the subway system is that it makes room for other people who want or need to drive more. Every single time the subway is out of service the roads totally lock up because the subways divert a lot of people.
“We should build transit infrastructure so everyone else can use it and I can keep driving” would be an improvement in mindset many parts of the country.
That said, the freedom to drive is a publicly subsidized freedom, paid for at the expense of the taxpayer and enjoyed unevenly by the population. Society made a choice to build many roads. We could make the decision, too, to make rail and other public transit so ubiquitous, clean and affordable that the need to have a massive, costly and pollution-generating asset just to get to work and get groceries could be a thing of the past for more people.
Needing to own a car because there is no way to get by without one, isn't freedom.
Freedom from…?
And I say that as someone who's all for making public transportation better and reducing reliability on cars