This is the problem mass transit is ideally suited to solve. Hiring 1 professional driver per 2–3 commuters when there are thousands all going the same place is ridiculously inefficient. A bus can easily fit 10x more passengers.
A few years ago I was in Honolulu, and wow is it crazy to have a gajillion cars on a tiny island (separated from any other possible destination by thousands of miles of ocean) all stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic every day.
They're really convenient, with buses being able to take me to within a five to ten minute walk from most anywhere within the Bay Area that I want to go, and even closer within SF proper. They're a lot quieter than the BART (where I feel I need ear plugs to protect my hearing), it's as clean or cleaner, and there are now apps like Citymapper which tell you exactly which bus to take and when to get where you're going.
My main gripe is that a couple of times buses just didn't show up at all when they were scheduled to arrive (not just late, but just skipped a bus).
NYC's subway system is definitely way better than BART in terms of having way more stops and going virtually everywhere, but it also has its own problems (like the stops being deadly hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter).