Buses are an incredibly bad public transportation option because they sit so well in a local maxima trap because they look like a viable public transportation and "share" the road infrastructure costs of cars leaving them "cheap investments", so much that cities don't think they need to invest in anything more expensive. But they also share all the detriments of investment in car infrastructure, and thus through self-fulfilling-prophecy expectedly never grow the ridership to encourage cities to push for more investment in public transportation over car transportation.

From that perspective bus services aren't even a band aid on the systemic problem, but a symptom/perpetuator of the systemic problem.