Yeah, like Philadelphia's or Boston's subways, or Chicago's L, or London's tube, all of which are partly of the same generation as NYC's?
There are crowded public transportation systems all over the world. When I look at the map of Covid-19, I am not seeing the concentrations of cases in large cities as I would expect if public transportation were a major driver of Covid-19 spread. The spread seems more correlated with population density, which makes sense since there are more opportunities to be exposed in a crowded environment than there are in a sparsely populated environment.
Public health officials everywhere work to minimize the spread of disease, usually in ways that the public is not even aware of.
Have you ever swum in a public pool? Do you have any idea of just how great the potential for disease transmission is in a public pool? According to one paper I read, people carry on average 100 mg of fecal matter—given its location, do you think that brief shower before entering the pool really washes that off before people enter the pool? Yet there are very few disease outbreaks from public pools, because of strict sanitation standards.