[treis]

The metrics that matters most are throughput and travel time.

Theoretically buses are best for throughput, but there's very few routes out there that can fill up a street with full buses. In most cases to totally alleviate traffic we need to take something like 4 people in 4 cars and put them in 1 van. Taking 100 cars and putting them in 1 bus is overkill.

Travel time is where big buses are going to lose. You have to balance density, transfers, and stops. There's no way to get them all. If you want density your buses have to go on the main thoroughfares. Which means you need to transfer to get to the secondary streets. Often trips will look like secondary route -> primary route -> secondary route which vastly increases travel time. Anywhere I want to go by bus in my city takes 3-4 times longer than driving because of this.

The sweet spot is Uber Pool/Lyft Line. You get there much faster and when you account for all subsidies it's price competitive with the bus.