If anything apart from public transit, carpools/rides from friends/family, they may use jitney services.
If you look closely you can find them idling outside grocery stores and such in many cities.
Poor people may not be riding so much, but are they driving? To some extent yes, but they are also excluded here if their car is not in adequate condition, or they cannot access loans to purchase a car specifically for ridesharing. At worst, the extra mileage risks unexpected repair costs leaving them both out of a job and out of a car. That's a risk many understandably won't take. To say nothing of insurance costs with the increased mileage.
There's a cottage industry of individuals or companies who own cars in good condition who rent them out to drivers and then take a chunk of their earnings (echoes of taxi cab industry, minus the badges). Talk to your drivers a bit and you'll learn all sorts of things.
Rather than justify "well, poor people ride and drive too", how about we look at what might drive someone to consider driving rideshare to be a viable primary source of income despite the low pay, high risks, and rent taking cottage industry.
Expanded access to cheap transit expands available employment opportunities. And who knows, maybe once they have a stable part or full time job with benefits, they'll drive on the side in their own car they could afford to buy and insure.
So no, opportunity cost doesn't matter here.
> If you can save 30 minutes of time by taking an Uber vs taking public transit, that's $9 of time-value.
I suspect you're used to the luxury of logging/clocking your own hours?
Hours (note: not half hours) worked do not work like that in most jobs. I get the shifts/hours the boss gives me. I can't get to my job at a convenience store or restaurant half an hour and then ask the boss for an extra $9.
And chances are, if I/we don't have cleanup done by end of shift, I'm not getting paid for the work done after end of shift, but I'm still expected to do it or lose my job. In restaurants, bosses will only dangle overtime when they're desperate, and will sooner cut shifts and run skeleton crews Sun-Thu than pay it out.
Public transit (arguably) can be run as a public service rather than a private enterprise designed to extract value for investors. It's far better for the community
Public services also extract value. There are just different sources and recipients.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/financials/
https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_earnings/2024/q2/e...
https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_earnings/2024/q1/e...