alt Hacker NewsI don't think they were trying to disprove the point. They admit that the US is largely car centric EXCEPT NYC, which is why congestion pricing has worked well. Also, car ownership rates are probably extremely correlated with density/efficiency of public transportation.
There is probably no other city in the US where you can truly eschew car ownership (this includes metro "dense" regions like San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston). Maybe you could include Chicago where there is a heavy amount of density/walkability in most of central Chicago neighborhoods.
You could eschew car ownership in NYC because the public transport network is better than in the rest of the country but it's still shite compared to what is considered 'barely ok' outside the US.
E.g. I. Berlin metro timing is about 5mins between trains and that is long compared to Tokyo metro timing.
But when it comes to density/how direct a public public transport connection exists between two arbitrary points in the city, Tokyo and Berlin are very close (and far ahead of NYC btw.).
What I'm saying is that the feasibility public will be seen as a real alternative or even improvement over using a car only if both topological as well as temporal improvements are blatantly obvious to commuters.