I guess I've been lucky. One of the clubs around here has enough members such that during my morning and evening commutes, I can listen, talk, etc. They have an OTA net on that repeater on Sunday nights at 8. Just the other night, I dialed in to one of the other area repeaters and heard the ham group there coordinating a parade for the city. Pretty cool.
When I was in Reno, they had linked repeaters all over the area. Hit one, you hit them all. Their club had probably 300 members. They had a daily net at noon. They had probably 10 other nets at different times during the week. And, they played the "Ham Radio News" once a week. Most all of that was on 2m. They even had a couple of repeaters set up specifically for rag chew. I'd listen to the main one and invariably if there was a major traffic snarl, somebody with a mobile would be providing real-time info on what the problem was and how to get around it.
There have been times when I've thrown my callsign out there on some local repeaters and got nothing. But usually if I just want to have a quick QSO, there's somebody out there listening. I had hoped to try out one of the local digital repeaters here but haven't been able to raise anybody yet. Not sure if it's a setting problem on my end or very, very few people listening to that particular 70cm repeater.