"All Chicagoans have the right to public transit." Sane and doable. Not done, not currently, as any map of the city will show you, but both possible and desirable.
"All Illinoisans have a right to public transit." I'd love to see it, even if it's just once-a-day trains to Springfield, to St. Louis, to the Region, to Milwaukee, to Rockford, to Peoria, to Chambana. But that's a lot more train lines than we have now, and that means land for stations and RoWs, it means manpower and materials for maintenance, it means working out the logistics of scheduling and fare pricing for the communities being served. And it still won't cover everyone unless augmented with bus lines, which also need logistics, manpower, and maintenance. Still desirable; not very efficient, especially for a perpetually cash-strapped state like Illinois.
"All Americans have a right to public transit." At that point it'd be empty words, doing more harm than good.
"All humans have a right to public transit." At this point, purely aspirational rather than descriptive.
The article is speaking from a British perspective, so that isn't really a problem. I do think that such a limit on density or some other metric. It should be more that every town and village has a public transport connection, rather than every rural farmhouse.
In Switzerland, minimum frequency standards for public transport are enshrined in law – meaning each citizen can expect regular provision of bus and train services, even in rural areas. It is administrated at local level, with each of the country's 'cantons' setting out a framework for delivery.
In the Zurich canton, for instance, which is roughly comparable with South Yorkshire, England, and includes both urban and rural areas, villages of 300 people or more are guaranteed a bus service at least every hour. In the Bern canton, which is less densely populated than Devon, small villages get at least four and up to 15 return bus services each day.
In both places, schedules are aligned with railway timetables to ensure citizens can travel short or long distances with ease. Accessibility for disabled passengers is also a legal requirement.
The "we" would be everyone who is not the "37 per cent of urban areas globally, and just 52 per cent of the urban population, [who] have convenient access to public transport."
newint.org
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