I won’t disagree with you for a second that transit authorities have been faceplanting all by themselves. But I also don’t see what I described as a conspiracy,

I won’t disagree with you for a second that transit authorities have been faceplanting all by themselves. But I also don’t see what I described as a conspiracy, it’s just how business works. While Uber competes with public transit the price they’re able to charge is limited by that competition. Once that competition is gone (and siphoning off a segment of its customer base is certainly a way to make that happen) the company is less constrained in how much they can get away with charging. Uber doesn’t have the obligations a public transit authority has, they’re free to pick and choose the most profitable routes to compete on and ignore the less profitable ones. Uber doesn’t have to deliberate engage in nefarious practises to destroy a transit system, they just have to do what works for them.