Buses are much easier to add in a city that's already built for cars. You just build some stations instead of having to dig up the whole road to add rails.
The shift to trains/bikes is harder, but the shift to buses is not as bad from what I've seen, because it re-uses car infrastructure well, and can be improved with minimal construction (often, just signage making a lane bus-only or similar).
In European cities you have bus service in trackless suburbia. Tracks are always better but need bus service in addition as practically you won't be building tracks everywhere.
Rail is much more reliable then buses since it doesn't compete with car congestion, plus you can make it run much more frequently, both of which are very important for adoption.
It's quite easy to get more buses, or only run buses at certain hours of the day. They are extremely flexible.
My comments on this page might make me seem anti-bus, but I'm more anti-bus-proponent. Buses are probably better than trains because they are so much easier to rearrange.
Buses on dedicated lanes have found to be cheaper and as fast as subways in some cities. But they're not as prestigious and it's harder to ensure that the next government won't destroy the system by opening it up for other vehicles.
Trains make sense for longer distances (more efficient) but in cities, buses work as well and can be used more flexibly.
They’re also more immune to congestion. Back when I lived in Chicago and used public transit, one would strongly prefer the rail over buses when possible, except in cases where the bus was an express route.
The biggest problem with most bus systems is that they use the same roads as private traffic. This means that for any individual person taking the car is faster than taking the bus. Of course all of these people who live in car-dependent suburbs already have a car so the additional cost to drive is low and they will get there faster and arguably more comfortable (sure, you can't read a book but you have your own personal environment). The end result is that the roads are full, need constant expansion and no one takes the bus.
Subways on rail are often faster than driving so they tend to be incredibly popular and greatly reduce traffic on the road. But subways on rails are not the only way to ensure that public transit is fast.
Trams require a different sort of infrastructure to install and maintain and are less flexible than a bus system.
Busses use much more of the existing infrastructure, which is one of the main reasons cities struggle to get a tiny segment put in. Busses are also much more adjustable to the city's needs. You can increase and decrease frequency on routs - or change routes by moving stops. Construction? Adjust routes. One bus down? Off the the mechanic and replace it with one of the backups.
And I'm not sure that would have helped parking and car ownership in the US. For some time, part of the dream was to own a car. A car meant freedom and it often still does as the us, as a whole, lacks decent public transportation outside of the larger cities. Sometimes the busses are stopped before the bars close, for example. Traveling from city to city? Good luck or prepare to be majorly inconvenienced. (overnight layovers, for example).
Buses are most viable when combined with a well developed rail system. Then it's worthwhile as an alternative to dealing with parking at the train stations and because you won't have your car on the other end of that rail journey.
I don't see how they're better than a bus though. Both need to travel by road. Buses are just easier to swap out and replace as far as I can tell. Also you probably don't need a platform to board a bus.
One thing is that it is pretty easy to get started with transit by running buses. They can use existing roads, which means they are as slow as traffic. They are flexible. They have a bad reputation in US but that is partly from bad service.
Rail is expensive and the US is bad at building it. But it has huge capacity.
The expense with roads comes in the maintenance and growth. Growth farther out means congestion which means adding new lanes. Transit helps with downsizing roads and reducing wear.
Why does public transit increase travel times? Good public transport is far more efficient than car-driving, for the simple fact that you can fit fifty people on a bus, and five hundred on a train. This massively alleviates congestion, is vastly more mechanically efficient, and massively simplifies planning.
In a city with bicycle lanes, bikes are a lot faster than cars for short trips, and they require far less infrastructure - since bike lanes are about a third of the width of a road, and they require no dedicated parking space. Not to mention the fact that bikes are far cheaper to own and operate.
I can understand having a sentimental attachment to cars - but in practical terms, they're a ridiculous solution to the problem of mass transit.
I mention you can have other terminals as well, and those in other urban areas can be connected to transit. You spread the parking around; in cities it’s often easier to take transit.
Workers can get to work without needing cars. Buses and trains exist. The reason why they don't in many cities is because people in the 40s and 50s collectively decided that cars are better, entire cities were designed around them, and designing cities for cars complicates public transportation planning.
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