Nyc has a subway for longer trips. So shorter stops make sense as anyone with a longer trip should be on the subway. However most cities (in the world) are not dense enough to support almost redundant system and in those I believe the speed optimizationis correct.

time is important to bus riders, speeding up the buses helps them. It also attracts others. Only a few are harmed more than helped - but they tend to complain the most even though they are a minority