The HN commentariat skews young and male so opinions seen here are often disconnected from average people in the real world. Many women feel unsafe riding on US public transit because other riders act out in antisocial ways. We can argue about whether this perception is rational based on crime statistics or whatever but you're not going to convince them to ride until the police and transit system operators start enforcing basic rules of behavior and cleanliness.

Can confirm. My partner has had far too many bad encounters on bart. I had a female coworker say she saw a guy get murder with a hammer on bart.

Obviously everyone’s experience is different but public transit had a bad rep for a reason and it had nothing to do with class/status and almost all to do with safety. Uber/lyft is getting a bad rep too due to safety.