Those who make the lifestyle comments provably live and work in an urban area or city with fantastic public transport!
I live in a village with a population of circa 8,000, it had an hourly bus service and 2tph.
Over the last 8 years I've:
Cycled 3 miles to work
Used a train to travel up to an hour for work
Walked 1 mile to get to work
As a household we have one car, to get rid of it:
- my other half would need to change jobs
- we'd see their family a bit less/it would require more planning (probably hiring a car to do so)
- we'd have to change how we go on holiday (less camping) or hire a car to do so.
- we'd have to do more online shopping
There's currently few activities which or children do which we couldn't walk/cycle to (there's one, but that could be done by train), although some would be more attractive if there was less traffic, although there's the potential to use a bus for that.
Yes there would be an impact on what we could/couldn't do. However it could be done and probably wouldn't impact is all that much.
We already make at least half of school/childcare drop off/pick ups by walking.
We certainly don't live in a city and by the government's definition it's not even urban (which would be >10,000) and certainly not even a mid sized town (40,000).
85% of people live in an urban setting (population of >10,000). That's a lot of people for whom public transport is a viable option if it were to exist (it mostly didn't exist as people are too in love with their cars).
That's a lot of people within 3 miles of most facilities which they will use week by week. Which makes walking or cycling an option (especially e-bikes) for a lot of that travel.