There’s a scene in Whit Stillman’s movie Metropolitan that I always found delightful:
Person A: You never take cabs?
Person B: No, I either walk or take public transportation.
Person A: So you’re one of those public transportation snobs. You look down on people who take taxis.
It’s funny, the things you take for granted depending on where you live. Taxis. GrubHub. More than one dermatologist within 20 miles of your house.
If anything, I’ve spent my life as a private transportation snob. I love my car. I love driving. I love freedom. I hate people who make plans to meet up at urban hot spots with no damn parking in a mile’s radius.
Living where I do now, this has been a good thing. We do a lot of driving. The closest McDonalds is 16 miles away. At least once a week, I drive 86 miles one way to go see my mom. I love my car more than ever.
But also because of my current circumstances, the word “rural” tends to get my attention more than it used to. When I saw that today was Rural Transit Day, it occurred to me that I don’t actually see a lot of public transit options where I live. It’s not really needed in my village, specifically; if you can’t walk, there’s pretty much always someone around willing to pitch in, pick you up, and take you where you need to go.
But there’s a lot of stuff that can’t be done in the village, and I’ve never really noticed shuttle buses or taxis or anything like that around here. So I looked it up, and there is, indeed, a low-cost transit service that covers our county. It looks like there are also churches that provide this service, which is nice because based on my cursory scan, it looked like some of the county services don’t cross county lines.
I was gratified to see this. I don’t anticipate anyone in my family becoming incapacitated and needing this service any time soon, but it’s nice to know the options exist. Much as I love Metropolitan, I really don’t want to move to Manhattan for my days of decrepitude, no matter how efficient their deliveries or how close the subway stop is.
Arwen Adams Bicknell 
I never really noticed that there was no public transportation in my “small” town, until I noticed it. Growing up in Tampa, the HARTline pretty much went anywhere I needed to go, though I never rode it as an adult. As kids, we’d get on the bus down the street from our house, and ride until it returned to the same corner, all for about a quarter each.
The problem with no public transportation (specifically buses) is that in a town that is trying to grow, we have a lot of businesses, but nobody willing to work at them. For the most part, the people in our town are affluent, so their kids don’t really need to work to earn a car, because they were giving a BMW when the turned 16. Their parents pay for their cell phone, their internet, their Netflix, so what incentive do kids have to work these days?
Every time our town opens a new restaurant, a week later, there are only 2 people working there. The people willing to, or wanting to, do those jobs simply can’t get here with any ease, or without a great cost for transportation like an Uber or cab.