Philly's transit access can be hit or miss, but when transit lines up, it's transformative. I moved from central PA to a Philadelphia suburb in 2006, a three minute walk to a regional rail station. It was an hour fifteen into the city (most of the time), and I'll take 1:15 on the train over 0:45 of driving every time. After a few months of figuring things out, we dropped from two cars to one.
Now I own a rowhome in the historic district of the city, we're opening the first floor as a museum within the next year, and I walk everywhere. All forms of transit (bus, trolley, trackless trolley, subway, light rapid transit, train, ferry) take contactless payment (finally) and these days, rideshare fills in the gaps.
Wages are higher in the suburbs, but I can get to a sizable international airport in 15 minutes by car, to the Amtrak station in 20 minutes via $3 subway, and I can walk to grocery/hardware/bakery as well as bars/restaurants/galleries/venues/museums/etc.
A car used to be a very, very important part of my life, and now it's more of a luxurious convenience.
Bay Area (including SF) public transportation is generally terrible, definitely not at all a great option for people who can’t even live in SF but have to commute to SF because of how expensive it is.
If you are forced to commute into SF for your job, then make living close to BART a top priority. (Many years ago, I met many people who suffered through that daily commute, but refused to make living near BART a priority. It was dumb to watch.) BART is a miracle train system (hybrid commuter rail/metro/subway), even if the coverage isn't great.
Or Caltrain. The new electrified Caltrain is a massive improvement: it runs at least every half hour all day, every day. I don’t know whether it was intentional on the part of the agency, but they stumbled upon the obvious phenomenon that many people will not use a transit system that runs too infrequently and that, conversely, if you have infrequent trains with low ridership, your ridership might return if you increase frequency.
Most of the people I knew lived in East Bay, but you raise a great point! The peninsula also has insufferable car traffic, but can be avoided during daily commutes by carefully planning your home around Caltrain.
Just because it’s in top 10 within the country doesn’t mean it is great and that people don’t need to rely on cars most of the times. “Just live near BART” is a laughable proposition since half the BART stations outside of SF do not have enough housing around them and the ones that do, have high density luxury apartments that aren’t exactly affordable to people outside tech and other high paying careers. Then there’s the question of “do I also work near BART?”, “buy groceries near bus stations?” Or “go to the hospital only near public transit?”. Answer to all of those questions is “No and I still need a car”.
I’ve heard Philly and SF as well, but have never been.