Yeah so I'm not going to take my 2 year old and 1 year old and all associated baggage to the hotel on my bike.

Would you try to do that on public transit, if it was better?

Europe here, and yes, that's what people do.

France here. I do take my bike everywhere (RER, TER, TGV… I've never had a car and rented <10x in my life, at 37 y-o). But it's getting difficult to find/book a place in most fast trains, especially between Paris and Loire Valley as there are too few racks available and biking is becoming more popular. I wish all major train stations had 24/7 bike renting service, including for bikepacking.

I am actually aware of that. I was trying to discern whether or not the person I was replying to is actually criticizing public transit infrastructure in US cities or has just accepted that you need a car (easy to understand why that might be, even if it is not necessarily true).

My kids could travel on public transit easily when it’s a good day.

There have been numerous times when I’ve been very glad that I had a vehicle to load them all into to contain the current detonations occuring.

I have no objection to using a train, if it's actually point-to-point.

(but like, actually point to point. not, get to downtown and walk another 1.5 miles or wait 45 minutes for a bus transfer).

Give it a couple of years and you can put them on a Tern GSD or similar.

(Don’t know if Amtrak would carry that. You can just about get away with taking them on UK trains.)

For routes where the bike area is first come first serve, how common is it for them to run out of space?

I’ve never seen it be a problem the few times I’ve noticed, but the conductors also bend the rules (hopefully not the bikes!) to make it work.