This is not a binary distinction. If you save $0.20 by taking public transport but it takes an hour longer, of course people drive. If you save $3 by taking public transport and it only costs you five minutes, that's different math.

> You can get anywhere in Germany with this, and 58 EUR is not even remotely achievable as monthly cost for a car.

When most people have a car you have to compare it not to the amortized cost of owning a car but the marginal cost of driving one you already have.

The majority of trips might be suitable for public transport but then people have a car because it's such an inconvenience to go to Costco and carry back everything you buy there on a bus, or they occasionally go somewhere the bus doesn't. So they get a car and then the insurance, tax, depreciation, etc. are all sunk costs and to get them to take the bus instead of driving themselves it has to beat the cost of gas.

Which it can, if you make it zero. Which in turn increases ridership, allowing you to justify more routes, which reduces latency, which causes even more people to take mass transit. By making mass transit more attractive instead of making driving less attractive.

> It requires connections that cover the last bit as well - and they will often run unprofitable.

Or you can just handle 85% of the cases that would have a justifiable amount of ridership and then let people drive a car or get an Uber in the 15% that would be mostly disused, instead of leaving it how it is now where people drive the majority of the time.