(Yesterday, 12:18 pm)Andreos1 wrote I'm not sure anyone said that buses should be the answer to every car journey. 
But what I will say, is that the vast majority of car journeys can (or should) be quite easily done by bus.

As we have seen with certain operators, they've not adapted routes to changing customer demands or alternative destinations. 
If they did do that, I think we both know that there would be a proportion of car users who would make the modal switch. 
If they make the modal switch, then there's fewer cars on the road etc etc. 

We've got major employers in out of town business parks. Where do the buses come to and from to get to the likes of Quorum or Cobalt? 
Bus lanes will not be the answer or solution to cars going to/from those places and fighting out for parking spaces.

Better route planning and adapting to changing travel patterns matters, no argument there. But you can't do that everywhere as the costs would be enormous for very little guaranteed return.

I'd actually argue Out-of-town business parks are a good example of where land use and transport planning have worked against buses for decades. For example, they are all built with huge car parks. If you get off a bus at Cobalt, you have further to walk to your office than a car user. Buses are already losing before a single business moves in! 

But that doesn’t negate the role of bus priority. Even where routes do serve major employment sites, buses still have to travel through congested corridors to get there. If those sections are slow and unreliable, people won’t switch, regardless of how well the final destination is served.

It’s also worth recognising a behavioural factor: many car users value privacy, control, and not having to share space with strangers. That preference didn’t disappear, it’s been a constant since car ownership became widespread. To overcome that, buses have to be not just available, but clearly reliable and time-competitive. 

The Mayors fares have clearly helped to some degree as passenger numbers are 8% higher apparently, but that only helps so much.

Mode shift isn’t achieved by a single intervention. It needs viable routes, competitive journey times, and reliability. Bus lanes don’t solve everything, but without them, buses struggle to compete with cars even when the routes are well designed. See TfL average bus speeds!