People will ride the bus if it’s not worse than driving. If you have dedicated bus lanes you need fewer buses to provide better headways because they’re not stuck in traffic as much. Density affects the cost per user but you can get a lot of traffic reduction immediately simply by having reliable service – people much prefer watching Netflix to staring at the bumper in front of them and saving $10k/year on average is pretty nice, too - and while American suburbs have sprawl problems there are still many millions of people living in cities with enough density to support bus service.
You need commerical or residential density to make bus lines worthwhile or else you end up having too many stops and you massively slow down the line. You also need to design a bus line around stops where drivers can take restroom breaks and you need to design lines around it.
I’m aware. Most American cities which existed prior to 1950 had that and could have it again if the city leaders chose to stop subsidizing private car travel over everything else.
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