No you don't.

You need a state or other body committed to fixed routs and seeing their long term benefit. The American ideology that public transit must directly support itself with revenue is what has resulted the miserable transit system that we see today.

Edit: I should add that the ideology of transit supporting itself also corrodes the key idea of fixed, scheduled routs, high-lighted in the article. I know in the US that even if a town I'm happens to currently have a decent public transit system (an occasional though uncommon occurrence) I know it will be crap in a couple years as revenues fluctuate since local transit is a political football, so I'd never count on public by selling my car or other decisions.

It’s not an American idea. It’s a pretty normal concept that public transit is not a charitable program and must yield benefit commensurate with spend. The view that public transit should have low farebox recovery is predominantly American and the opposite of the majority of successful public transit programs everywhere in the world.

If what you said was true then it would be the inverse - operating costs would be mostly paid out of government subsidies in the areas with most ridership. But in fact, it is (and predictably so) the case that good transit systems have high farebox recovery - the HK MTR, Taipei MRT, and the Tube are those I’m familiar with and they’re all much nicer and more frequent and have high farebox recovery.

In fact, I find the whole thing confusing. Do people actually believe public transit is meant to be some kind of giveaway to a small number of riders? It’s clear from looking worldwide that where it is useful riders pay high enough fares because it is so useful.

I can understand some sort of bootstrap capital investment (or one-off interventions like for COVID-19) but the idea that operating costs should be predominantly covered from general taxation doesn’t really hold up if you look at which places are effective at this.

I think even more important than balance sheets is land use. There's a vicious cycle of car dependency. Things that make driving easy make alternatives bad (government built toll-free roads, mandated parking minimums, restrictive zoning, lack of sidewalks, lack of protected line lanes, wide and high speed urban roads).

A train service only earning 50% of its costs through ticket sales is okay if it provides a useful transportation network. But because we are so dependent on cars, people fight removing parking spots for a dedicated right of way. So public transit get stuck in traffic, and funding is kept at skeleton/welfare service levels resulting in 30 min to an hour between vehicles. The useful public transit network can't even get off the ground because no one believes there will be a critical mass of support to fund and build a useful network.