I really don't get it. Pretty much everywhere outside of US buses work no matter the city layout. Just add some stops and run some buses.
1. Cul-de-sacs and surburbia lack through-streets. So it forces heavy long buses to navigate winding narrow loops. This makes your routing complex and slow.
2. When commuters travel suburb-to-suburb instead of hub-and-spoke downtown, origin-destination pairs are too scattered to support fixed routes with meaningful frequency.
3. Low passenger volume per mile makes fixed-route bus operations financially unsustainable.
4. Disconnected street networks and long setbacks force residents to drive just to reach a bus stop. Like seriously pull up google maps. There are a million suburbs in the greater DFW area where you need to walk 15 minutes just to get out of your neighborhood to the nearest main road where a bus stop would be placed. When it's a thirty minute round trip of walking, (not to mention what the walking situation looks like at your destination), and you throw in stopping at every bus stop on the route, every commute takes several hours instead of 20-30 minutes driving.
2. You either create loops or hubs where people transfer. The hub can be just a regular bus stop where lines meet.
3. Looking up the density of Dallas suburbs I can tell you that buses can work well in far less dense places.
4. The math doesn't add up, if you can get somewhere by car in 20 - 30mins driving then even with 15 minute walk on either side the bus will take you there in less than 'hours'. And walking 15 minutes to the bus stop is not the end of the world. There would also be plenty of people living/working closer to the stop.
From your original comment I got the idea that you think buses need to be these massive heavy vehicles, but that's not really the case either. I've been to places where the public transport was operated by microvans with as low as 12 seats. I don't think they were actually much bigger than american pickups. But I think a regular bus would work alright.
Many bus stops are up to 1:45 away.
Can and implemented are often worlds apart.
A 12 seater is not a microvan. That is in full size van territory.
Right-sizing the vehicle is smart. Why not also allow 4 person buses that run on demand to and from any point?
And I doubt that 4 or 12 is the ideal bus size in that place.
A larger bus is needed for useful transit.
You have areas where leaving the cul-de-sac zone takes 15-20 minutes on foot; so you need a stop or two in the zone.
Now you have a short walk to the stop; but if you want this to be a viable alternative, you need some frequency of service.
And that means that the routs need to be active across the whole week, not just the hypothetical peak (otherwise everyone needs a car anyway).
So how do you actually get a high average number of riders per bus? More stops?
But if each stop needs to go in and out of a cul-de-sac, the travel time goes up.
Eventually people stop tolerating the extra time, and get cars.
So you end up with a case of empty busses running... Seems much worse than a waymo.
Holy shit, you have to walk a mile from a cul-de-sac just to get to a street with an intersection?
Who the hell designed these streets? (I guess Big Auto?)
Basically trying to retrofit busses to a development built around cars is stupid.
It isn't big auto that designs these places. Big auto likes them, but the people like it because they don't know anything other than cars, and they know they hate living on a busy street with lots of cars. Those are the only two options they know about so don't bother replying with all the others you know about, they don't exist as options.
I guess you don't want to stop more times than needed, so maybe you'd want to cluster the demand somehow into "virtual stops", and you may lack some amenities like shelters.. so maybe the traditional bus route is good enough. Though it feels like it's ripe for optimisation (you know the classic no buses come for 30min then 3 arrive at once, or these buses are all full whilst others are roaming empty)
I am pretty pro transit and urbanism but it really annoys me in these discussions when people (not you specifically) just wave their hands and go "add more buses, ez, problem solved", completely disregarding the physical realities of how we have constructed our civilization.
So people are using public transit in Germany not because they love to but because they are forced to.
And the system is far from perfect, Germans are complaining because public transportation is having a lot of delays. You can't reach every point you need, you have to wait and some times public transportation is dirty and filled with dirty, rude, violent people, drug addicts and drunks. Not a lovely way to travel.
When the bus is once per hour nobody uses it except those who have no other option and those are people who likely have 'issues'. Those people exist in every city but they a rarely seen anywhere else because they are a tiny minority of all people unless you look for a place they concentrate.
Build a useful bus system and people ride it. However a useful system is expensive and so you can't get the money. In car cities 'liberals' support transit for other people not themselves and so they object to the costs that good transit would cost. If they had good transit it would save everybody money over their cars, but even 'liberals' can't see that that and so won't support it.
The faster you get out of the bus, the faster you liberate grandma and kids from a fall, being mugged, or from freezing to death while waiting, and instead you promote an active lifestyle.
Waymo-like transport is incredibly liberating for low middle class parents, that cannot be trust their young kids to ride a bus alone and take time off blue collar work to take their kids to X practice.
Plus, they are much cheaper and safer to operate long term
Buses are a solution today, but only for upper class americans & soccer moms, who don't realize the issues that low income or limited fixed income seniors face in their everyday life.