Would never buy a used car for more than max 8-9k, more to the 5k range...

The problem with public transport is, that it's cost scales inversely to the cost of cars.

If I ride with my family with 3 persons for example, in the car it's 1/3 of the cost per person as to compared to 1 person, in public transport it's 3x the cost of a single ride....

 

 My son and my husband have a car, so if we go someplace as a group, we don't take the public.

And three of us have student tickets, that we already have to pay.