The $18 is operating cost and doesn't include capital costs. Lyft is EBIDTA profitable and Uber likely is on rides too. Their fares are enough to cover the operating cost of the system. Comparison is as apples to apples as it can be.
>Pre pandemic it looks like bus/rail cost Marta around $4.50 per trip.
Even still. To use a practical example, my kid's day care is 4 miles away. I would need 2 buses to get there by MARTA so $9 if we assume pre-pandemic costs. Lyft will take me there for between $8.93 and $14.17 with various options on shared + wait time. For a solo car for a pick up in 4 minutes it's $11.01.
Lyft will take me 9 minutes to get there while MARTA will take 46 minutes if I time everything perfectly. More realistically it's an hour which is barely faster than walking the 4 miles.