What I'm saying is that city buses consistently fail to meet any of their presumed goals when you account for low ridership, high ridership, and everything in between. There are zero cities where the bus is entirely funded by fares. There are zero cities where ICE buses consume less fuel per passenger mile than the typical passenger vehicle. Congestion is increased when buses have low occupancy and are making frequent stops, or consume bus only lanes.
So it costs more to run buses than personal vehicles, they pollute more, and they create traffic problems except for those short periods of time where they don't, except those short periods of time don't make up for all the waste during the other periods of time.
Perhaps electric buses make sense, but certainly ICE ones don't.
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According to the Department of Energy’s Transportation Energy Data Book, in 2010 transporting each passenger one mile by car required 3447 BTUs of energy. Transporting each passenger a mile by bus required 4118 BTUs, surprisingly making bus transit less green by this metric.
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Can Mass Transit Save the Environment? Right Wing or Left Wing, Here's a Post Everybody Can Hate - Freakonomics Freakonomics
I'm surprised by the support for city buses, as you've scolded me before for not being libertarian enough.
It seems cities treat public transit as a right, not as something that should make any sort of economic or environmental sense... and ridership is falling nearly everywhere.