As the original poster I'd mention that I'd love to see a much better public transit system but that I've also seen it repeatedly stymied by car-centric interests. I've seen stupidly large bus exchanges placed in the middle of fields because all the land closer to what people actually want to get to is covered with acres of parking and I've seen bus lanes shot down because of the expected impact on traffic. We need to accept that car infrastructure will be degraded to actually get meaningful transit changes and city densification efforts through and those box stores in lakes of parking need to die as a default footprint to build retail. If it takes seven minutes to walk from one storefront to the next then you're never going to get people out of their cars no matter how many buses you throw at the problem.

At the end of the day it comes down to: car infrastructure, walkability - choose one.