That's definitely possible, I don't know enough about the history, but now that there is a lot of established sprawl it does have a causal effect in discouraging public transit.
Also, in the context of comparing to other countries, I would think many did not have the land available to spread out in the same way at the time cars were available? I'm just curious how much of this may be related to the timing of the US
Not really your main point but there are quite a few US "metro areas" with fairly sparse layout/wide scope, so I think public transit actually is a harder problem in the US than it is in e.g. Europe. That said even the cities that don't have this excuse tend to have mediocre at best transit here (for example Boston).
It's definitely more expensive than most delivery apps, but idt it is even because of the delivery fee, which usually appears reasonable. They kill you on the percentage based service charge. Which is maybe trying to makeup for different delivery logistics, but it definitely doesn't explicitly price based on delivery difficulty- which makes it much more annoying to me.
The only other app I noticed doing this is Caviar. Perhaps they assume that people ordering from steakhouses will largely not care about the extra service fee, so it makes more business sense to jack up the price as much as possible. But personally it has stopped me from ordering on multiple occasions.
Not sure how DoorDash compares but what often made me pause on ordering UberEats pre-pandemic was the way they do the service charge. It is a percentage (I believe 15%?) of the cost of what you are ordering, and it does not appear to go to driver at all (tip is a separate prompt + there is a delivery fee)/clearly doesn't go to the restaurant. I don't understand why I should pay Uber a percentage based on the cost of the meal, when GrubHub and some others operate on a flat rate service fee. I would sort of understand if it had to do with order size, but when you start adding higher end restaurants it really feels like a rip off. And it also makes their "deals" feel really hollow because who cares if delivery fee went from $3.99 to $0 when you will often still have a >$10 service fee?
Also, in the context of comparing to other countries, I would think many did not have the land available to spread out in the same way at the time cars were available? I'm just curious how much of this may be related to the timing of the US