Fair enough. Not familiar with SF bus system but the bus system where I live, which is considered quite good I think, has each bus line 1/2 mile apart from each other. Almost no one lives directly along a route so there's an extra 1/8 mile average walk just to get to the route, not a stop on it. Fine by me but a lot of people don't seem capable of that for whatever reason. Combine that with the bus not actually going to where you're trying to get and I can see why people aren't huge fans.

The reason is usually that they need a car for some journey, once they have paid that fixed cost, they may as well use it for more journeys.

All these calculations are only true if your destination is on the road the bus runs along. Since not every road has a bus line, you also usually have to walk multiple blocks perpendicular _away_ from the bus line in addition to some of the distance between stops.

If your road doesn’t have a bus line then that’s a problem not an inherent limitation.

Ideally you want a grid where bus lines are near intersections so going from North to East means crossing 1 street so you can go anywhere with 2 waits and a street crossing.