[woodruffw]

This is the wrong question: the right question is whether public transit is more subsidized per passenger-mile (or freight mile) than our road networks.

(Even more abstractly, it doesn’t matter whether or not public transit is highly subsidized, so long as the positive externalities of that subsidization are deemed worth it. You don’t get to the size and density (and corresponding economic output) of cities like NYC by allocating personal parking space for every resident.)