First of all, let’s try to avoid American-bashing, and stay respectful to everyone.
I’ll start: for me it’s the tipping culture. Especially nowadays, with the recent post on !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world with the 40% tip, it just seems so weird to me to have to pay extra just so that menu prices can stay low.
The stops, and the indirect route the bus must take to reach all of those stops, greatly increases travel time, and by “greatly increases” I mean by a factor of 2 to 3.
For example, Google Maps estimates that, to travel from the suburban apartment complex where I live to a business building in the next town, it would take 12 minutes by car or 42 minutes by bus. And yes, there are bus stops close to both the start and end points of this route; that time is actually spent riding a bus, not walking.
Outside of densely-packed cities, public transit is, by its nature, slow. Very, very slow. More public transit doesn’t change that. It might decrease how long you spend waiting for a bus to arrive, but the bus still has to make the same stops along the same indirect route, so it’s not going to be any faster once you’re aboard.
Cars are popular for a reason. It’s not just some anti-competitive car-industry conspiracy. Public transit very much exists where I live, and whenever I see a bus on the road, there’s almost never more than a few people aboard. Buses are quite clearly viewed as transportation of last resort.
rural areas here have buses with stop-on-demand. the bus continues on when no one is in the stop AND no one on board has pressed the stop button. very convenient.
Suburban buses where I live work that way too, but that’s only faster as long as no one needs to get on or off, and buses driving around empty is horrible for the environment.