The thing about public transportation is that it often operates at a loss or at least pretty thin profit margins no matter how much the ticket prices get raised. In a lot of places, service is bad, operator pays get cut while they're overworked, wait times are ridiculous, no one can get places in a timely manner most places, if you can get places at all, and a profit still isn't being turned
But the money and human suffering and indignity that public transport saves can't be quantified by profits from ticket sales. "Can people get places in your city easily to work, to school, for leisure, for socializing? How much money do you save when your workers get to their jobs on time? When people can access healthcare and government buildings easily? How much pain and suffering and human life do you save when people know they'll never be stranded in your city or town no matter the time, day, or how much pocket change they have?" these aren't questions answered by "it makes profit" and the necessity of infrastructure can't be measured by profit, you have to think long term, you have to look at benefits in more abstract ways, and all Business Models are deeply bad at that kind of planning. It isn't a mystery why a machine that exists to make profit right now isn't a machine that's good at making a robust system that focuses on long term benefits, fiscal or ethical. the fact that people are still struggling futilely to turn something with benefits that abstract and that vital into a dispenser of narrow, short-term return is fucking infuriating
Public transportation should be free and well-funded because a place where no one can get anywhere is a place no one can exist in public, and that's bad for the economy but it's also bad for human fucking dignity
