Cars can be expensive, yeah. I live in a very car-centric area (zero public transportation, with many things too far away for realistically walking there).
To throw some numbers out: A "cheap" used car ($5k), financed over 3 years at 8% is $156.68 per month. At my middle age, decent full coverage insurance is around $100 per month (it would cost a lot more if I were still younger). We're at $256.68 monthly just to have a car that we may elect to drive.
But that doesn't include parking for the car (a place to live with good parking tends to cost more than a place with awful parking). It also doesn't include the costs of actually driving the car, like regular maintenance, stuff that inevitably breaks or wears out, fuel, washing the car, and so on. Let's just make up a number and say that these things average ~$150 per month, for a total of ~$406.68 per month to drive a car.
Now, suppose that a commute is 20 minutes each way using that car, or 1 hour if riding the bus. And that a bus pass costs $62 per month.
And let's say that a person "brings home" $25 per hour worked, and that they work 40 hours in a regular week (173.93 hours in a regular month), and that the commute time counts as unpaid work.
The car commute adds 14.49 hours per month, for 188.42 hours total time in work+commute at a cost of $406.68.
The bus commute adds 43.48 hours per month, for 217.41 hours total time in work+commute at a cost of $62.
The bus seems cheaper and slower at this point, which we all probably implicitly knew to be true.
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But if my math is right: By the time transportation is paid for, the person commuting by car has an effective hourly wage of $20.92 for their time+commute. And the person riding the bus has an effective hourly wage of $19.73/hour for their time+commute.
So owning and driving the car may be a better option than taking the bus, depending on a person's specific situation and proclivities. And of course, it's more nuanced than that in ways that are harder to math out.
With a car, commute time is just lost time. A person driving a car must drive that car the entire time; they don't get to read a book or hang out on HN or whatever, but they're only doing that for 40 minutes a day.
With a bus pass, commute time might be productive time. A person riding a bus might decide to read a book or hang out on HN or whatever. So if a person chooses to do so, they can use some of that 43.48 hours riding back and forth to work doing something that has meaning to them.
On the other hand: Owning a cheap(ish) car means being able to travel to places where a bus doesn't go, and do so on a whim, and (optionally) take a mountain of stuff along with them if that is useful for whatever reason.
So yeah, cars are expensive. But buses are also expensive. (Life is expensive.)