In the United States transit provisions along with almost every practical service, effect, technology, and effort was created, funded, and put forth by private enterprise. There were often public elements to some degree, but by today's standard we'd be laughed at by our founding father's. The individual, private, thinking entrepreneur is who built this nation and created what, in many ways, we piggy back on top of today. The original roads were pikes, also known as toll roads, railroads were privately funded by bonds and other issuances of various types of securities. The maintenance was funded by fares and expansion of neighborhoods and shockingly enough, sprawl was encouraged by transit growth.
All of these transit services, freight services, passenger rail, and other methods of logistical movement were created, maintained, expanded, and operated by private enterprise. Sometimes there was some city interaction or regulation, but rarely, if ever, did any Government entity play into this industry.
The first time the Government did come into play was to dredge some of the first canals. This didn't require massive taxation, huge funds, or even life altering financial weight put on the shoulders of the American people, it did however begin the slow twinkling of Government control in the particular industry of transportation.
Even after this first involvement though, the Government, especially the Federal Government stepped back and let people move, build, and expand as they would. Expansion was pretty intelligent, without absurd paths taken, and with financial impacts only directed by those in direct need and desire of said services. In other words, you need to get from Philly to Washington DC, you bought a passenger train ticket and went. You needed to have cargo hauled from Boston to New York, you paid your waybill and off went the cargo. That was the primary funding model, pay as you need service. It covered ALL of the costs of the service and often went well past that. Cornelius Vanderbilt as one should know, was NOT poor.
But rarely was there much cause for issue with these prices. A man earned what he did, and honestly bought the services he saw he wanted. The income a man made enabled many, if not most, Americans to use rail for this need, and some even had the advantage of personal carriage or other means. Few were forced into walking, few were even concerned with traveling if they didn't need to wastefully go about a trip.
The percentage of an average man's income that was spent to travel to and from in those days was much less than what an average person pays today for transit, car usage, or other functional means of travel when looking at all the costs.
I'll be adding more to this particular article, but since I commonly make reference to these facts, historical points, and other such notions I wanted to write this up. Eventually I'll get a solid list of references and other material also to really bring forward the points I'm making.