I've always read National City Lines as more of a hedge, than a desire to dismantle transit. GM also wanted to play in the bus market, since selling buses can be profitable too. So to develop that market, they were one of few people providing investment (albeit with strings attached)

Also National City Lines never owned the red car but they did own the yellow car.

It's my pretty firm belief that it's not actually that good. Like Westside MAX is the only portion of the system that has a good alignment and density along it but it's served infrequently and doesn't have a bus grid. The best thing TriMet ever did was the eastside bus grid in my view.

If transit services a popular land use, with limited auto access, else where in the network, someone may choose to use a park and ride but people seldom otherwise use a Park and Ride.

I have some friends in Portland who have said similar things. I haven't commuted on MAX regularly since 2017, so I can't speak to the current experience.

Talking this over a bit more and I mean the biggest thing that I want to prevent is people with dementia from running for elected office

We have an existing bus to the airport, it doesn't have great span and requires a transfer, so that the whole region can access the airport but they're starting to consider a whole BRT corridor on the freeway that's generally kind of bad, but gives my city a one seat ride to the airport.

Transit in a region isn't something that can turn good overnight or with a single investment. It requires a network before people can trust it. It requires a network before people build a life around it. In order to build a big enough network to be compelling, it will involve a lot of buses.

I eventually figured this out after getting a different card. In other news apparently Ubuntu decided networking wasn't complicated enough on Linux and added a wrapper called NetPlan 🥲

I mean there is, but they have dedicated funding and much more flexibility in raising their own funds, so it doesn't make the news.