You are falling into a false consensus trap. You are asking a question of someone who has zero comprehension or understanding of the context or foundational knowledge that would enable them to actually answer that question, let alone come to a realization by asking it in a socratic way that you likely subconsciously meant it to be.

You are well beyond the zone of proximal development, the idea that challenging someone somewhat, but within their range of understanding will lead them to come to new understandings and realizations. This person represents a type of people (and not him personally) who lack such fundamental common understanding that you may as well ask that question of a cat.

That's not meant personal, it is a universal challenge and you asking that question is also an example of the very trap you fell into asking it. You lacked the understanding of what you were doing. Many peel fall for this, often even the most "educated" or "intelligent" ... which really should put the definition of "intelligence" itself into question since the "intelligent" keep repeating these types of rather simple mistakes.

Not a country, but it's free in Belgrade, Serbia for last two years.

Due to weird goverbnment statistics and unaccounted expats officially it's 1.1M to 1.6M of people, but actually there likely well over 2M people living there.

Public transport is pretty good there and it cost their budget $300M-$400M a year.

The buses running along the I-91 corridor in VT/NH USA centered around White River Junction VT and Hanover/Lebanon NH have been free to ride since around Covid. And those are two transit agencies. Broadly: one serves north of Hanover, the other south.

Luxemburg. Was there the other day: public transport was great!