A lot depends on the size of the cities. Complaints about public transit options in america usually drown out praise for the cities which do a good job with it. A lot of the major cities have rail systems which range from acceptable to legitimately good. And there's usually at least some fairly easy and inexpensive options for getting from one city to the next. Bike use is also rising in popularity in a lot of american cities.  Bolting on bike lanes as an afterthought doesn't always make for the safest situations, but it's a step in the right direction.  But that all breaks down once you get out of the handful of larger cities. Get to midsized ones and the options for the average person usually boil down to spotty bus service or driving. In larger cities the busses can be great. But past that the american average usually comes down to very limited hours of operation and dead time on the days people would most want to use them.  You can often still walk to far more places in those areas than people think. But only if you're comfortable dealing with sidewalks disappearing for large stretches, jumping onto or off of things and dealing with getting past busy roads with no pedestrian crossings. Easy enough if you're in ok shape. But most people in those areas aren't in ok shape.