We'll have to agree to disagree.

Saying it's no contest is a huge exaggeration. I won't argue that BART/MUNI is better than other transit systems, but I still get around without a car.

That said, the fact that transit closes in London and Paris while New York doesn't is a major advantage. It's actually precisely the reason why I have been able to not take a taxi or have to walk home in the early morning. And in NYC, a lot of people don't own cars because they don't have to either.

BART and Muni beat most other transit systems in the US, but pale in comparison even to London, let alone Berlin or Frankfurt. If you're heading anywhere west of downtown SF, expect long waits for connecting buses...which often simply fail to appear, NextBus's predictions notwithstanding. As an earlier commenter mentioned, it's not uncommon for SF commuters to finish the last leg of their commute with a cab.

And a lot of people in NYC don't have cars simply because they can't afford to park them, not because available mass transit makes them unnecessary.

If you're getting by in NYC without a car, then the car is unnecessary, whether you can afford to park it or not.

Can confirm that for Prague. I'm using bike mostly, sometimes combinded with metro, but whenever I fallback to public transport I feel grateful for how well it works. It's easy to get anywhere at any time, even at night. Last week it took me 40 mins at 4am to get from my home near the centre to the airport outside of city using bus lines that cross the city in 30mins intervals and meet together at hub stations. On contrary, the bus lines in country were privatized and many useful (but probably not so profitable) lines were cut, and while it got better balanced in time, it's still suboptimal on many places/times and is a living example of where free market actually diverges from being a good public service.