There will be very different responses to Ebbie's questions depending not only upon country but also upon part of country, but I give it a try both for myself and for Germany in general.

May I start by mentioning what Ebbie has not mentioned: bicycle. In my home town, more than 40% of all possible movements when outside of the house are made by bicycle, next comes walking and only then the car. My town has close to 300.000 inhabitants, has no hills and just about every distance is considered bicycable (it takes about 30 min to cross the town).

I'm curious- in the UK and wherever else there is easy, convenient rail and bus service, how much do you spend on transportation? (Presumably that is money you are not using on private vehicles.)
I just do not know. I know the costs for my car (close to 2000 US$ per year (everything included except costs of buying), but I only can very roughly guess that we pay more but less than double than we pay for the car (my wife works far away and takes the train)

How many times a day do trains/buses run in the direction you need? How late do they run?
The bigger the town the later and the more often. For trains: During daytime and up to about 10pm each big location in Germany can be reached from each other location once per hour (fixed schedule; when you miss a train the next train will be exactly one hour later), smaller places can be reached once every two hours, connections between large cities can be once every thirty minutes. Very few connections during the night.

Buses/trams within town: Roughly from once every 10 minutes to once every 30 minutes. During daytime in Münster so often that I just walk to the bus stop when it rains too much for the bicycle without consulting the timetable first. Chances are that I miss the next bus while still leafing through the timetable. After 7pm the connections are 'thinned', the later the less, after 10pm once per hour up to 1am.

Can you haul your instruments- from harmonicas to basses- on the train/bus with you? Or do you use your own vehicle for that? No problems with public transport

How often a week do you use your own vehicle? How much does it cost you for fuel each week? About twice a week. We usually fill it up once a month for 50 US$. But we are an exception in Germany. We use the car for less than 5000 ml a year for we prefer public transport whenever possible.

What does a new auto cost you? What makes are available?
All makes, I'd say. The cheapest new car might cost a bit below 10,000 US$, my car (if I had bought it new) would have cost about 20,000 US$, there is nearly no upper limit, but a rough guess is that only 10% of all new cars cost more than 40,000 US$.

In the old days, British and European people routinely walked what nowadays we would consider great distances. How do you feel today about a 15 or 30 mile stroll to the next town?
We now would consider that hard work which we only would do for recreation. How often do I walk for more than 15 miles in one day? Once a year with friends.

Wolfgang