I’m not sure if your first sentence is true, but it’s an interesting idea. My gut says even the most staunchly anti-local transit folks would still gladly use public transit in a city that has a good system (e.g. if they were to visit Paris, or Tokyo, etc).

Saying people would never use transit even if it were more convenient doesn’t match the pattern of what I’ve observed actual humans do. It would be nice if there was a study on this.