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You and I have fundamentally irreconcilable differences in how we feel what costs us effort and what is comfortable relaxation.
My drive to drop my kid off at school and then to my work is a pleasant 20 minutes with my thoughts or a news radio show. It's comfortable. I've had much longer commutes in bad traffic and that was labor. But anything under 30 minutes is "free" in terms of expending my energy and mood.
I've ridden busses and trains in America. Those are very much not comfortable and free in terms of my energy and mood. But maybe if I lived in some European city I'd have a different feeling about it.
I would describe the difference as being the amount of situational awareness that is required. In a walkable city with good transit (e.g. most cities in East Asia), I don't need to pay attention to where I am going or who is around me. I could stumble drunk from one end of town to the other at 3 in the morning and never be mugged or otherwise accosted. I can relax on the subway and read a book or listen to music, confident that none of the other passengers is going to start a fight or spill something on the seats. If I drop my wallet on the street, it will either be left exactly where it fell or some random person who passed it will find me to return it.
When contrasted with that type of city, driving a car feels about like walking in a bad neighborhood i.e. I need to pay attention to everyone around me at all times or someone could get hurt. Of course, if the only kind of transit you have ever ridden is the sort where you also need to watch everyone on board for potential risks, then it is strictly inferior to driving outside of places as congested as New York. Many of the differences of opinion on this issue seem to stem from people who have only experienced one of these systems not comprehending the other.
Yes, the question of whether people will use public transport when it's offered, even if it's significantly cheaper than a car, varies a lot by city, and even by parts of the city.
When I was taking public transport in Chicago, which is quite good by American standards, people would advise me on what lines or stops to avoid, or where my car would be stolen from the park and ride lot. There's a local train I'd like to take, but everyone says to avoid it because I have to drive to the station and cars are stolen from the lot frequently. There's a lot of inconvenience people will put up with to avoid gambling on losing an object worth half a year's pay.
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