In the case of Stockholm,

public transport is better than places like LA and Brisbane Australia (which isn't saying much), but hilariously bad compared to Tokyo and London. So it's somewhere in between.

livability without a car likewise is OK in inner city and immediate surroundings, but quickly gets a lot worse the further out you get. (unlike eg Tokyo, where even suburbs very far from the inner city are very convenient and liveable without a car)

Stockholm's inner city is about as walkable as any other European city I've visited, and much nicer as you're much less likely to get into dilapidated areas (there's almost no graffiti or dirt on the streets, unlike places like Milan, Lisbon or Bruxels) except for a couple of places where, unfortunately, the beggers from south-east Europe congregate, making the place look like a gipsy camp. But the suburbs outside the central area are much more like American or, more closely, Australian cities, with a huge sprawling area where having a car becomes more important the farther you go, but still with decent public transport at least for peak hours... that's just due to the low population density in those areas... Stockholm attracts a lot of young people and families because that's where the jobs are, mostly, so this situation seems unavoidable to me... Adelaide is in the top 3 livable cities, and the situation there is very similar (actually it has a much smaller central area and a perhaps even bigger and less dense suburban sprawling), the differences in ranking between them seems to me mostly artificial unless you're taking into consideration Adelaide's beautiful beaches and mostly great weather compared to most of Europe.

Genuinely curious: what do you find "hilariously bad" about public transport in Stockholm? I've never lived there, but as a casual visitor the T-bana, trams, ferries etc seem to work just fine.

Often, trains and subways will straight up not run because "there were leaves or snow on the tracks" or whatever. Like, OK? No other city I've ever lived has had that problem, lol? (let alone that often! it happens all the time)

Punctuality is pretty bad, which wouldn't be a problem if frequency was good, but it's not, so...

It can be pretty unsafe and unpleasant.

Basically, it's "OK" in inner city and immediate surroundings, but quickly gets a lot worse the further out you get.

Almost every big city has problems with trains running late or being cancelled, I think it's more common than you might think. I live in Stockholm and before the pandemic (when I commuted daily on the pendeltåg and before that, with the roslagsbana) I agree with you it could be pretty bad (there were several days where they simply closed off the trains and everyone had to squeeze into much smaller replacement buses, and a few times when even the replacement buses didn't run - you had to find a cab to get home... and good luck finding one.. but at least the government covered the fee if you could show there was no other alternative at the time) but having lived in a few other countries, I've seen all sorts of crap like that as well, and other things that nearly never happen in Stockholm are quite routine at other places, like stations and trains where passengers squeeze like sardines, buses so full some people go hanging outside the doors (the bus driver is supposed to close the door, ofc, but the situation is so precarious they try to let in as many as they can as they know how terrible it is to be just left behind because there's no space), robberies on night buses (which to my knowledge can happen in Stockholm but are extremely rare)...

There are almost certainly very few cities in the world (if any) where residents who need to use public transit day in and day out think it's a consistently great experience.

The leaves+water and pressure forms an extremely low friction surface that risks derailing the trains and happens all over the world.

Some trains have special brushes or water jets to clean the tracks

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2860418/End-...

Dublin’s light and intercity rail is affected by leaves too. It’s a major problem for rail adhesion in autumn.

London's the same. Here is more info from Transport for London: https://madeby.tfl.gov.uk/2019/10/07/leaves-on-the-track/

Depends which city but it’s A for decent sized cities in central/north/Western Europe (less so for eastern and Southern Europe although major cities there will also be like that).

Even midsized towns in Germany, Austria & Switzerland will be pretty doable without a car. In less affluent countries like Poland and Czechia (I have lots of friends in both and lots of relatives in the latter) outside the major cities people expect to drive (it might still be possible just less convenient than in the German speaking countries to rely on transit). I have Greek friends who say it’s similarly inconvenient in many parts of Greece.

But I suspect almost nowhere urban in Europe will be completely unlivable without a car.

Public transport is not utopia, yes you can go everywhere but you'll be squeezed in with 50 other people (or worse) in a can.

I regularly go "in a can" (tram) with more than 50 other people and it's really quite comfortable and pleasant.