With apologies to Robert Service:
"It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold 
   till I’m chilled clean through to the bone
Yet ‘taint being dead-it’s my awful dread"
   of waiting for a bus that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,"
   that the car in our future remains.
Biggest reason that almost nobody rides the buses is that almost nobody wants to ride the buses.
It is not lacking enough stops for people to stand at and freeze their extremities off, it is not lacking enough grimy fiberglass seats... it is that we just despise waiting for and riding in the giant breadboxes on wheels.
The constant droning about how we need more and more and more... NO!
Buses need to be there for poor people, for the homeless and for those hardy, hard-headed souls that want them and are willing to live near the routes.
What we need is a simple, bare-bones system that links the people that need a second-rate system of getting around and fund that... and nothing more.