I feel like many public transit systems in the US are designed as radial lines from a city center (constant theta, varying r) and relatively few axial/circular routes (constant r, varying theta).

Car routes (and placement of shops and offices) take advantage of the random route ability of cars to specifically avoid the downtown congestion, enshrining the “quick and convenient to drive from one suburb to the neighboring suburb, but incredibly painful to use public transit for that trip”.

Buses suffer a time penalty naturally along their route, but if you add a “take a bus in a direction you don’t want to go, change buses, take that bus back-tracking the wasted motion, and only then get closer to your destination”, it’s pretty much bound to suck.

In Japan and Europe, I’ve seen more axial service lines and/or more of a mesh covering the areas rather than a bicycle spokes looking transit map.