Unfortunately this only exacerbates the problem as ridership declines. I know students in Boston who have literally never taken public transportation. 5 years ago this would be unheard of.
People just want to take the path of least resistance and there's a lot of young tech workers with low expenses and high salaries who don't think about the long-term impact of the money they're spending on unnecessary conveniences instead of saving.
The real problem is that complaints about a shard public resource grow disproportionately like a meme and people codify that public transportation is terrible and unreliable, when in reality it's imperfect and that's an exaggeration.