Transit is very popular and lower ridership stats are hiding its popularity from those who don't ride transit themselves
The underlying problem is transit is still configured for a centralized peak commute that will never occur again, and since the number of SF bound peak commuters have permanently dropped so has ridership *for a schedule built to serve them*
Naive policymakers are wrongly interpreting this lower ridership as an expression of transportation preference, but surveys have demonstrated people want to use transit more if it worked for them