This is a chicken-egg problem. Those cities became tier 1 cities over time because of their proactive public transit strategies.

Tokyo has a great subway system (for the most part--there are locations that aren't that well served) and there's good train service between many moderate-sized cities in Japan. But my experience is that, once you get to a city outside of Tokyo, the public transportation options aren't great.

I’ve personally never felt like I needed a car in fukuoka, osaka, or kyoto. What places did you have a bad experience at?

You don't need a car, but you won't be able to reach everything outside the cities. It's fine since everything you need is in the cities, and you would never run out of stuff to see, do, survive with. So "need" is a strong word, but certainly if you explore further out you will want a car.

The comment was about needing a car in the cities, so that’s not really relevant

Not really a bad experience but I was able to walk as a tourist to where I wanted to go because the areas were pretty centrally located. The one time I took a bus to somewhere--don't remember location--it wasn't that convenient.

Kyoto has a lot of buses, so maybe that’s where it was. I’ve found that they’re usually on time and not too crowded, but maybe you had a different experience.

See: the Netherlands. Or Switzerland, for counterexamples.

If anything, properly built small cities and towns are actually even better for public transit, since they're small. You don't need to cover a lot of ground.

Heck, everyone talks about self-driving taxis. Self-driving trains and buses, that's where it's at, actually. A decent chunk of the cost (and limitations) for public transit is the need for human drivers. Self-driving buses could have longer routes, could drive around the clock, etc, etc.

Ah, forgot, they could also be much smaller, but still cost effective. Think 10-15 places for smaller routes. That would do wonders for connectivity in more remote places.

> If anything, properly built small cities and towns are actually even better for public transit, since they're small. You don't need to cover a lot of ground.

Agreed, with the caveat that everything is crazy expensive now so smaller cities struggle to afford to build even a small amount of rail. We had excellent public transport in the 1900s, it was torn up for the automotive revolution, and now we can't afford to put even a 10th of it back. We struggle to put an extra station into an existing line, let alone new lines.

One of the big issues is that property is so expensive in the modern west that buying up the land to build is prohibitively expensive. The old game of private rail companies making money off property around public transit stops isn't working here at least, because property is already so unaffordable, there's no room for price growth.

What they could do, if the political will is there, would be just to build lots of bus lines. The lanes for sure are there and buses are much cheaper. You can run a lot of bus lines for 1 tram/light rail/metro line.

If you want a house with a carpark you can build it, or find that in a rental.