I didn't say it cost gas only. Quite the opposite, I ignored the gas cost and shown only my rough cost of ownership. It's just the fact that the huge entry price of buying a car is put in parallel to low ticket prices, when really, it shouldn't. Otherwise you could also add the cost of shoes and clothes to the train ticket, because well you can't exactly ride a train barefoot and in your undies. And all the food for the energy spend walking from station to station, can't forget that.

Yes a decent car can cost between 5 - 10K used, but if you take care of it you will get most of that money back. And I'm not talking about SUVs or Pickup Trucks, but compact hatchbacks with 30mpg or 6-7L per 100km. The engines easily last 10+ years with regular but minor maintanace. 2000s Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas can easily outlast multiple generations of trains and busses.

My city has gone through 4 generations of bus fleets while my buddies dad still rocks a VW T4 camper probably on his 2nd milage gauge loop. We figured out how to make the perfect car in 1993 when McLaren build the F1. Nothing beats low weight and a reliable engine. The big mistake was letting heavy SUVs become the go to car for everybody. Historicaly speaking, it's an overcorrection from the US being invaded by small cheap and reliable Japanese hatchbacks in the 90s. An that I itself was an overcorrection form gigantic 20 feet long cars from the 70s and 80s. SUVs and Pickup Trucks are like a fashion trend, they are not here to stay. Slick E-vehicles seem to be the newest trend, they just haven't fully found the shape they want to be in yet.

From the point of physics, a train weighs hundreds of tons and is pulling another hundreds of tons of weight. A hatchback weight 1-2 tons. They work on the same principles. They need energy to accelerate their mass. Trains need to carry a lot of people to break even otherwise they are just pulling themselves for nothing. You should be uncomfortable having a whole cart to yourself. Sure a car might be 100 times lighter but the train can carry 200 times more people at max capacity. Max capacity being an important factor. Most trains travel way below that. Remove all the traffic lights and hills from a cars path and it will be just as efficient as a train. Trains are just really good mass haulers.

One of the major advantages that trains have over cars is their electric engine. Electric engines have an efficiency of roughly 80 - 90% for transferring energy into motion. Car engines only 20 - 40%. And combustion engine are at their economical limit. Putting electric engines in cars is putting them directly on par with trains.

Thats why we shift towards EVs, because we already have everything but the batteries and charging figured out anyway. Public transport is a political issue, EVs are an engineering and marketing issue.