You keep insisting that it's essentially impossible to raise a kid without having a car. This is flat out untrue, especially in New York City or any other place with good mass transit. Many, many people who don't own cars raise kids.
I didn't say it was completely impossible. I am insisting removing access to cars makes a hardship even worse in general and, yes, impossible in some cases. Keep in mind that some people get special license plates because doctors do not believe they are capable of walking across parking lots to get to their destinations.
At any rate, people with babies and mobility problems don't take elevators to the subway platforms because generally they don't exist or they double as outhouses.
In Manhattan, these people spend a lot of money on delivery services or rent for walkable neighborhoods (because the subway won't cut it, as I explained). It is a luxury to live this way. People with these concerns generally move out of places like this.
In outer borroughs, there is bus service, but one doesn't wait 10-30 minutes each way (not an exaggeration) in freezing weather for a bus with a baby or a heart condition. And the bus stop that probably wasn't accessible to stroller or walker due to unshoveled sidewalks and berms of trash-pepoered ice.
I am not saying it's impossible to live this way. People somehow do it, though I suspect they are shut in for large portions of the winter. I am saying it takes various forms or privilege or hardship to make it work. It's flippant for able bodied and financially well off people to hand wave about how walkable New York is without trying it out with their own canes and wallets.
It's a bit like saying, "let them eat cake" to be honest. It's just lacking a sense of experience and practicality.
