I come from a place where taking public transit is ubiquitous, although I personally didn't have a need to take it by myself until about 17 years old as everything I needed was close by. One thing I've noticed living here though is that a lot of people (not all) look down on public transit as being for lower income/class people only and thus wouldn't be caught dead on it. This feeds down to their kids.
My sister in law is the typical Calgary suburbanite. Rarely leaves the comfort zone of the south of the city and downtown is a place to be avoided if at all possible. She lives in Evergreen. Her 16 year old daughter works at Southcentre. The kid is not allowed to take the train home by herself. Her parents will go pick her up, or on occasion, my wife has had to go over and pick her up (we live close to the mall) She has tried a couple of times in the past taking the train home - on one occasion, she had to phone someone as she couldn't remember which stop to get off at and ended up getting off at the wrong one. On the other occasion, she got off at the right stop but didn't know her way home to her house from the station! These seem like basic thing that anybody should know (especially teenagers who are on their phone constantly and have access to google maps, but have no clue how to use these tools apparently), but I guess if your parents don't teach you these skills, then it's hard to blame the kid.
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