The New York metro is also very, very vast in area, and many people also live 1-2 hours by car away from their work. If you're carfree in NYC, you probably just

The New York metro is also very, very vast in area, and many people also live 1-2 hours by car away from their work. If you're carfree in NYC, you probably just don't have Riverhead and Stamford and Allentown in mind as part of 'NYC', whereas you might well count the far end of Redlands and the San Fernando Valley and Orange County as part of 'LA'. As LA's transit system evolves and new companies evolve and are re-sited, it's likely that more jobs will be sited at transit nodes instead of purely at freeway nodes. Beyond that, if the driverless taxi era comes to pass, people won't be stuck buying a car for many thousands and fighting tooth-and-nail for parking just because there's a need for a car trip twice a week.