The weirdest thing about moving to car-centric Silicon Valley are the after work drinks. These are often in the office (since they are located at motorway junctions away from anything else) and then you stand there carefully nursing your one drink since you all have to drive home.
In London you'd just go to a pub for a few beers after work with your colleagues, or meet up with other friends after work because you all worked in the city centre anyway so it was easy.
It seemed impossible to get to my hotel from the Eurostar train in a reasonable time with the tube when I came in on an after work train. Ended up with an unlicensed cab with a driver who spoke with a very deep cockney accent and dropped us off on the wrong side of the street where there was a fence to prevent pedestrian crossings. It was an adventure. I never ended up on the tube, because it was simpler to just walk to the office.
It does require local knowledge to expect this, I'll grant.
A) This problem does exist in cars. Highways crawl to a standstill when there's an accident.
B) there's no such thing as "train collisions". Its not like cars. They don't get into "accidents". It would be unacceptable for public safety if they did. There are other error modes which cause delays, but its not the same thing as tacitly accepting the deadly consequences of the flow of vehicles being loosely regulated and fully decentralized.
C) I think you're severely undervaluing just how much of a "you problem" it is when your car breaks down vs just how fleeting a problem it is when a train is delayed. The inherent statistical risk of the universe is averaged over everyone. You won't ever be randomly on the hook for 3 digit sums of money at random intervals.
The agency argument really underplays the great freedom of not owning a car. Not owning a car means not being tied to where you are. I can get on a plane and move anywhere on a whim. There's nothing to sell off. I can chase any opportunity I want. I'd rather have two wings than 4 wheels. Hows that for personal agency!
From experience with Caltrain, they do. Lack of grade crossings on an underground or elevated train won't prevent 'tresspasser incidents', although no grade crossings and good train control will prevent a lot of things. Sure, it's a me problem when my car breaks down, but it's also a me problem when the train breaks down. Either way, I can't get where I'm going in a reasonable amount of time without an alternative, and when everbody else is looking isn't a great time to be looking myself.
> Not owning a car means not being tied to where you are. I can get on a plane and move anywhere on a whim. There's nothing to sell off.
Cars are pretty easy to sell. Or you can park it at the airport and never pick it up, if you've got nothing else to sell before moving. Of course, getting to the airport may not be easy on transit either (sometimes it is great, sometimes it's an easy transfer or two, sometimes the schedules are aligned in just the wrong way).
I've been to Paris and London and used their Metros and had no car. They're nice, but there's still a lot of walking between where you are and the metro station. If you're on the system late at night, there's a lot of waiting. If you're on the system during rush hour, there's a lot of people in a tiny space. If you can use it on the shoulders of peak, it's wonderful. Then again, roads are pretty good on the shoulders of peak too (parking in a busy area is almost never great, but there's an easy solution: avoid dense cities, which I'd prefer anyway, dense cities have a lot of people, and I don't like people in groups)
You may not have to pay money for unexpected maintenance, but you may be stuck somewhere when a train breaks down or has a collision; hopefully at a station and not on the particular train. Yeah, this happens with personal vehicles, but when my car won't start, it doesn't have a big impact on taxi capacity; when the train is stuck, everybody wants a taxi and it's hard to get one.
The big problem is there's no sense of agency. I can maintain my car, but I can't maintain the metro. I can fuel my car, but I can't prevent metro workers from striking. I can pretend I'll avoid collisions when driving, but I can't drive the train (and the train can't stop in time if anything unexpected is on the tracks).
Americans like a sense of agency, even if it means a worse result. Give me liberty or give me death and all that.