Doing that could easily add an hour (or in particularly bad cases, two hours!) each way to your commute. Some people do make that tradeoff, but it seems really unpleasant.

The big issue is that transit accessibility is priced into rent, so while parts of US cities might actually be reasonable to get around with public transportation, you'd never be able to afford to live there with a low income.

Fair enough. I guess it really is that bad in the US.

If you live anywhere with public transit that's complete enough and reliable enough to get you to work on time, you're paying more in rent to make that happen. It might be cheaper but not by a lot

If you go by the numbers in the post I responded to, this isn't true, at least not where I live. The $1400 figure is pretty much exactly what I pay in rent, and I have no problems getting to work with public transport for $100/month.

To be fair, I live in Europe, but this is why I asked the question "is it really that bad?", to which the answer appears to be yes.

There's lots of places with OK service, if you measure by overall coverage it's pretty bad.

Like https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016... is about a guy that caught the attention of the internet because he couldn't take public transit to his job.