To make it short, as a teenager my family was too poor to have a second vehicle for me to learn in without risking losing transportation, then I went to univers

To make it short, as a teenager my family was too poor to have a second vehicle for me to learn in without risking losing transportation, then I went to university in a city with a very good public transportation, and then entered the workforce right around the heyday of cheap VC-funded ridesharing which was wildly cheaper to make use of than owning/leasing a car was. Even for a while after ridesharing got expensive it still made more financial sense to use over car payment plus parking, insurance, tickets, gas, etc. What finally pushed me over the edge was moving to a suburb during the pandemic to cut down on housing costs. It’s possible to get along without a car since my area is broken up by shopping centers (it’s not a house desert), but still clearly designed to be driven around with few sidewalks. There’s bike lanes which is nice, but a lot of them run right alongside 45mph+ traffic including big trucks which is not so nice.