San Francisco is a small expensive area within a large metropolis, it's not that tricky to commute from somewhere a lot cheaper.
However, more broadly speaking, it is neither necessary or desirable for everyone to own a Ferrari.
Given that a place in SF costs many times more than a Ferrari nowadays, I don't think it's an inapt analogy.
And it is indeed a great analogy because it shows how wrong you are -- having advanced cars that can rapidly accelerate to freeway speeds be affordable is a very desirable thing, and the fact that a Honda Civic of today is a vastly superior automobile to a Ferrari of the past (or better yet, a Volvo of the past) is a triumph of modernity. You think what, cars are too good?
Likewise, the fact that many people of today find that the best way to live involves throwing years of their lives away on a long commute is a human tragedy, and thinking that it's not desirable for this to be fixed is equally brain-damaged as thinking people shouldn't have good cars.
0: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/10/former-navy-c...
Common carriers are a long-standing practice that has clear benefits for society as a whole. What's more, back in the 1960s and 1970s we -as a nation- realized that there is value in helping the weak, infirm, disadvantaged, and those subject to discrimination participate as fully as they are able to in the public sphere.
If you want a somewhat less academic reason, remember that you can be afflicted by illness, infirmity, handicap, or -albeit on a longer timescale- discrimination at any time. When you're down, it's good to have services available that help prevent you from hitting rock bottom and allow you to help yourself get back on your feet quicker than you would on your own.
It's because they serve only high-density areas with commuter-only routes that operate only in a very limited time frame (morning hours).
I think that such a model can not be called 'urban transit', a better term for it would be 'commuter private transit'.
And it has nothing to do with efficient massive urban transportation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10207669
Edit: grammar
By this, do you mean "I'm the only one who seems to be paying in cash?". If you do, then the vast majority of folks who aren't fare-jumping are either:
* Using a Clipper Card [0] that has a "cash" balance
* Using a Clipper Card that has a monthly pass on it
* Using a Clipper Card that has a transfer from another bus on it
* Using a paper transfer from a previous actual-cash transaction with the farebox
[0] RFID tag which locally stores a balance, a couple of ticket types, and a shocking amount of your fare history. I presume that the data from the card readers on the buses are synced up with some central DB periodically.
I made the 38->30/45->CalTrain or 47->CalTrain ride every single day for nearly a year. It seemed like once a month or once every other month, MTA fare inspectors would board the 38, 47, or -far more rarely- 30/45 I was riding and check everyone's proof of payment. On the 38 and the 47, it always took about five minutes and was a... fairly irritating delay on top of a really irritating commute.
I'm a huge fan of Caltrain's policy: Monthly pass holders only have to interact with a reader twice at the beginning of the month [0]; once when you board and once when you disembark. For the rest of the month the conductors use their brains to remember the current month, and compare that against the end date on your monthly pass.
[0] And -realistically- you don't even have to do that. I went a couple of months without interacting with the Caltrain readers; the conductors never said a thing.
In my limited experience though, it seems that when I ride the MUNI I'm the only person actually paying a fare. Everybody else either has some kind of pass or is fare evading.