Also, after a while, those who can afford it (or those who can't but still spend) use Uber / Lyft / Gett / Juno / etc liberally. I haven't been in the subway for at least two months because I can't stand it anymore, and it's especially disgusting in summer.
No car ownership is no way to live your whole life. I feel trapped here. No, I do not want to go through the hassle of renting every time I want to get out of town either. As far as daily commuting, underground systems always suck especially for longer trips. I like above ground commuter trains of hiqh quality, and I like cycling when there's investment in infrastructure and shower / lockup facilities everywhere. Unfortunately not the case.
Precisely.
My wife was rabidly anti-car (living in the northeast) until one summer a friend went out of the country and left their car with us. The precise word she used was "free" - we were free to get groceries on the fly, we were free to go out of town. We just had an enormous number of options open up to us, as our travel overhead / travel radius improved so dramatically.
It was freeing.
I never had to argue with her after that; when we had the chance to acquire a car, we did.
I find this sentiment interesting because I have the complete opposite feeling that you have. In my view, NYC is light-years ahead of Atlanta (where I live) when it comes to walkability, bikeability, and public transit. I would love to live in a city like yours.
Given that Atlanta is nowhere near NYC in those regards, it's weird that I feel trapped every time I get in a car here.
I don't own a car because I feel free without a car.
This goes to show me that even though I think NYC, Portland, Minneapolis, et al. would be amazing to live in, there are many other opinions and sentiments. :-)
If/when I have children, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Many (most?) people do the same.
There are huge numbers of people here, so of course there are lots of children here. They're either super wealthy, or really not living up to my standards for quality of life. (I was not raised in a big city.)
If you see lots of children around NYC, consider the case of cars. I don't have a car in the city, and no one I know does. But there's clearly many cars all over, more than can really fit in the roads and curbs and parking garages. Having a car in NYC is a huge pain in the ass. It's not a great car experience. Same with children.