Having your own car is extremely convenient. It can carry all your stuff and be reasonably secure against theft. If you're worried it's going to rain, toss an umbrella in the trunk. If it turns out not to rain, you didn't have to carry an umbrella all damn day, etc.<p>In most Texas cities, there's ample easy and free/cheap parking. Parking in NYC or DC is a nightmare. Those two cities also have very high densities and reasonably good public transit systems.<p>It seems there's a naturally inverse relationship between parking convenience and public transit convenience. I believe that's driven from environmental factors (cutting it back to only one factor, it's probably the cost of land as #1 driver). If your public transit system has to cover all of Dallas/Fort Worth at the same transit density/convenience as Manhattan is covered, you're going to spend an ENORMOUS amount of money on that infrastructure and that's not likely to be paid back by the moderate/low level of usage that would occur. (Because parking would still be plentiful and convenient in those cities...)