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More often than you think, if you've ever had to live without access to a car. I wouldn't want to carry anything remotely expensive or breakable on the bus, and I wouldn't be able to carry a week's worth of shopping home from the nearest supermarket while walking -- to say nothing of my ability to bounce around different shops and get my preferred brands of things.
Renting a car and paying for delivery are both absolute ripoffs in my opinion. IKEA, for example, is goddamn atrocious. And food shopping by delivery always runs the risk of nonsense substitutions. The cost would probably equalise faster than you realise, I'm looking at 50 quid a day to rent a car.
And that's only looking at the utility of absolutely needed cases, not taking into account all the things you could suddenly do on a whim once you own one. Visiting my parents costs half as much if I drive as opposed to taking the train. It's faster, I can being back as much crap as I want, and I can choose when I leave and stop for a break when I want. I don't think you can put a price on that kind of thing, but if I had to, it would be high. Driving could cost more than taking the train and I'd still choose to drive because of this.
I think you're still picturing taking a bus in a car-dependent place. Obviously that sucks. I go grocery shopping several times per week because there's a grocery store a short walk from where I live (and 2 others that are on my way home from a regular appointment). Renting a car every day or paying for delivery on everything you buy would be expensive, but that's not what I'm talking about. 60 dollars each is expensive if you do it twice a week, but a bargain if you do it 3 times a month (at least, looking at my car-related expenses). But I was thinking about things like buying furniture or moving, which is the kind of thing people do 1-2 a year at most.
I can't see how it being MORE crowded would help me with my 3 bags of shopping or bulky items.
Going to a shop every day sounds like a huge waste of time as opposed to doing several days worth of shopping at once in a car, especially if you're walking both ways. Something that takes 1 hour a week max is now taking something more like 4 hours, distributed across the week. That's time you could have been doing anything else. To say nothing of the fun experience of trying to lug an unwieldy 6-pack of bottled water or something home over hills. Yeah you could just buy one at a time, but then you're losing money from not buying in bulk, too.
What are you even talking about? Just because a place isn't car-dependent, doesn't mean it's downtown Manhattan at mid-day.
It's really not a big loss of times, especially if you can it on the way home from somewhere else. A seriously, your example of something that's hard to carry is a 6 pack of water bottles? I can easily put a gallon of milk, 5 pounds of potatoes, and several other items just in my backpack. It's not hard to carry in the slightest.
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