alt Hacker News> IME a certain socioeconomic class is unfamiliar with using them
This is absolutely part of the problem.
> Public transit needs a network effect: When more people use it, there are more buses and trains and they come more often
My point is the public resource is the bus lane. Not the metal running on it. Giving the public busses a monopoly on that resource may be worth playing with.
Public transit could use a lower barrier to adoption. I think people familiar with it - myself included - forget how uncertain it is for the first time - is the bus late or not coming? was it early? - and all the unstated conventions, etc.
Interesting about the lanes. But that metal has a large capital cost, training, etc.; we can't add and decrease capacity on demand like cloud computing resources. Maybe contract bus operation - including the metal - to multiple contractors and when customer satisfaction is low, give the route to another contractor.