I am from Germany and public transit is hit and miss here also. Big cities like cologne are great. My commute to work is also fine with public transit (although I mostly bike, actually) But very often there are places I have to go where public transit is pretty inconvenient (adding a lot of time to a trip). I am all for public transit and it should be cheap (maybe even free) and widely available, but it simply doesn’t work for me all the time.