Also, a bicycle can serve as a last-mile connector to the transit system - imagine someone who lives at Wilshire and La Brea but works in West Hollywood, and would like to take the Red Line, but doesn't want to lose an hour to walking.
Isn't LA like, the single place on earth where this is least true?
I have never heard this before? Do you a citation for this? More likely in LA is that people simply "limit their tether to 5 miles."
but you gotta get over that perception of sprawl to realize how great LA is for multi-modal transport.
multi-modal transport? You mean the bus? The bus in LA is a joke. Nobody wants to take the bus in LA - it takes way to long to get anywhere. The metro is notable in how little area it covesr. I think this map illustrates this well:
https://media.timeout.com/images/103334943/image.jpg
So what does that leave? Cars. You yourself even mentioned ""Lyft and renting a car." Owning a car, renting a car and calling a car are all car-centric modes of transport.
And LA doesn't have a perception of sprawl it is actually sprawl.
Except that LA is a sprawl and almost nothing is close together. Maybe if you live at the beach its nice.