I lumped nurseries, kindergartens, and pre-schools under "school". 2-5 year olds will not walk and will not take buses. Also if there is a nursery nearby it would probably have long waiting lines just to get a spot for your child, so in most cities it's essential to be able to choose from at least 4-mile radius.
> I lumped nurseries, kindergartens, and pre-schools under "school". 2-5 year olds will not walk and will not take buses.
For as long as I was in daycare, I was walked there by my parents. When I started school, I first walked, then biked there. It was not until I started grade 7 where any form of transport was necessary, and since then I took public transportation until I graduated.
This was in the suburbs of a mid-sized city (~100k) in Sweden, with comparatively bad public transportation.
A 4 mile / 6 km radius is a huge. I assumed you lived in the US when you wrote miles, but your profile says Lithuania. A 6km radius covers most of Vilnius, and plenty of pre-schools.
But about Vilnius - public pre-schools in Vilnius are well placed, but they have huge waiting lines. If you want to get one in time realistically you would have to register your child before his/her birth, which is of course impossible. So most people join the line after birth and when the child reaches 2 years old they take them to a private one, until they reach their place in line and can transfer.
But let's say you get a place for your children 1-1.5 km away and you have a job that takes 30 minutes to reach by car (which in the morning is quite optimistic due to traffic). So to take children and go to work for yourself would take, say, 40 minutes.
One alternative to cars - biking. Only possible in summer days and warm autumn/winter days, and when it's not raining. So maybe 50% of the year. So the bike would take you probably 1.5 hours. Add this time for also going back and its 2 additional hours lost per day, and only on those good sunny days.
Another alternative is a bus. In non-corona times some busses in Vilnius are so crowded that you cannot get in and have to wait for another one. Nobody with young kids even tries to get there. But assume you live in one of less crowded places. Then the question is - how far the bus stop is from your house, how far the bus stop is from the kindergarten, and how far it is from your place of work. And how many different busses you will have to take in order to reach everything, and the waiting and travel times between transfers. So this scenario depends on luck.
That's just how I see it from my perspective here in Vilnius. A big number of families here have 2 cars. For some reason I imagine most bigger US cites would only be worse in that regard.
Many families here in Copenhagen have one car, though certainly not all of them — and it's much more related to where people live than how much they earn.
It's very common to see bicycles with a child seat, or box bicycles, used to take children to/from nursery on the way to work.
There are slightly fewer days with rain here than in Vilnius, but it only matters if it's raining during the journey, which is far less often than ⅓-½ of the year. I usually wear a raincoat, though sometimes I just take the bus.
I don't think the goal is to remove 100% of driving, or private cars, but it is great when a city (including its suburbs) is practical and accessible without one. It also makes it accessible to people without cars, like old-enough children, some pensioners, poor people, etc.
Vilnius could build at least one metro / U-bahn line, or perhaps two. It is already big enough that the transport backbone should be grade separated from the streets, and metro is the easiest way to go.
