My wife and I took a trip to the middle of nowhere in Wales last fall. Train to Cardiff from London, then from Cardiff to our little cottage in the Pembrokeshire coast, I drove for 2+ hours in a rental car, learning to drive on the left.
The day after we arrived, we learned we could have caught a train to Fishguard, a tiny village nearby, and then the local bus would have gotten us within a ten minute walk from our rental house. It probably would have even been faster and cheaper than the car we rented. It sure would have been less stressful for me.
It's not just that the cities are more walkable. It's a whole culture that says cars should not be required to live a full life.
Yes and no; as a Brit I would probably have chosen a car for that trip, because local buses are infrequent and unreliable. Trips other than via London are often easier by car.
The UK never really had the space to develop US-style suburban sprawl, even in its designed car-centric new towns like Milton Keynes.
Yeah. People I know in the UK outside of London generally own cars. And my personal recent experience with doing long distance walks in England over the past few years is that, while it's mostly been possible to get to the beginning and end of routes with public transit (because the routes are chosen with that in mind), busses can start to get scarce and, in practice, I've ended up taking taxis at times. I've also had to take a taxi when I've needed to skip a day walking for some reason--or gotten a ride from an inn owner.
The UK is certainly better than the US in general for having transport options but you get outside of cities and it starts getting a lot harder to efficiently travel around without a car.
I've driven left-hand automatic and manual in England and I was fine in such locations as Trafalgar Square (within ULEZ now) and BFE Worcestershire. Once I learned the pedals aren't switched it became 300% easier.
Contrary to popular opinion on Internet forums, almost all car trips in the US are less than thirty miles long and about 80% of all trips are less than ten miles long despite the country being pretty big.
The day after we arrived, we learned we could have caught a train to Fishguard, a tiny village nearby, and then the local bus would have gotten us within a ten minute walk from our rental house. It probably would have even been faster and cheaper than the car we rented. It sure would have been less stressful for me.
It's not just that the cities are more walkable. It's a whole culture that says cars should not be required to live a full life.