NYC is the absolute best case in the US, if you're talking about the ability to exist without a car. It's not that no one talks about those millions of households, it's that they are all concentrated on a few standout islands (literally!) in a sea of the nearly identical car-only supermajority of cities. It's the exception to all exceptions.
Most people live in cities, but the vast majority of American cities do not approach even 10% of the quality and availability of transit in NYC. That's why I said that NYC is a massive outlier among the rest of the US.
I don’t think the average city is a useful comparison when more people live in larger cities which tend to have better mass transit options.
People live car free in a wide range of cities, it’s more convenient for more people in NYC thus the large percentage of people doing so, but the percentage is rarely zero.
