Most transit (in the US at least) is buses. If you can have buses arriving every 5 minutes, it’s night and day from every 15 or especially every 30. I don’t think issue if overlapping lines applies to buses.

In SF, reaction to pandemic ridership decline was to decrease frequency of most transit. This also unfortunately makes transit less appealing :(

> Transit is a very complicated prediction / optimization problem.

It also depends what you’re optimizing for - is the goal to increase total users of system? Ensure there aren’t empty trains / buses? Have ridership “pay for” operations?

Because having your light rail continue into late night even if sparsely used means people can rely on it as an option. Frequent bus routes even on lesser used routes still can make the overall system more likely to be used.