No amount of self-driving busses fixes that.
>The only people who say that are people who are justifying their not riding the bus
Is this supposed to be a tautology? Obviously people who justify it are people justifying it. I would bet real money that the vast majority of women will choose a private vehicle over a bus if they were the same price.
Given same price is false - a car is always more expensive, but many of the costs of a car are fixed, gas itself is cheap while you still have to make the car payment even if you ride the bus and let the car sit - so it seems like a car could be cheaper.
I believe that given transit is a reasonable option for most trips (not just getting to work) most women will decide over 5 years that transit is safe and will start using it. However there is no real way to know except to try it meaning your bet is not really possible - there are too many variables allowing me to say you didn't do enough.
people in NY and Chicago are fiercely defensive of their mass transit options. the bay area would be a terrible place without BART and Muni.
for all its problems, shared mass transit is a net good and there are millions of people in this country who prefer it.
Also, the 25 million figure is number of rides per month, not a measure of people who ride transit. Somebody might ride the bus to work 5 days a week, and that counts as 20 rides. The count of "people" that ride those transit methods drops to well below 1MM, factoring that in.