If you take the bus, traffic is 'worse'. Yeah, you aren't steering and using the brake, but the time to get from A to B is longer. I'd say by about 1.2x or 1.5x.
Also, have you actually taken the Santa Monica Big Blue Buses ever? Have you tried to commute on them?
(Friday rant time:) They are the main public transit form on the westside. I rode them to UCLA for ~2 years. I'll never do it again. A bus driver in LA is sick of all the shit that is LA traffic. They use the gas and brake without thought to the transmission or brake-pads. You are jerking back and forth the entire time, a real ab workout for the hour it takes to get under the 405. Also, you have to stop the bus and, you know, pick up passengers. This can take 5 minutes or more per stop, though average is about 1 minute. But you never know how many wheelchairs they are going to try to fit on the bus that day, a 10 minute wait. There are also tons of people just trying to scam their way on. Every morning the bus driver has to spend 3 minutes at some random stop trying to get a person to understand that it is $1.25 to ride, but they always forget to speak english or spanish, go mute, or try to fake sign language and just keep walking on. The driver stops the bus now and turns it off, per union rules, calls dispatch, and then we all have to wait for that jackass to get his butt hauled off the damn bus by some LAPD person or they chicken out and actually get off the bus. But it's ok, right, you are not in traffic! Oh, but wait, you are now spending, on a good day, ~1 hour standing on the bus, because they only run 2 of the #1 buses and everyone on the westside is trying to get under the 405, about 70 people per bus. Some crackhead lady is now ranting at some old man about since she is a woman, he should get up and give her his seat. Now the driver, who for some stupid reason decided to not just skip that stop, like they do for yours every other morning, is screaming at people to 'move to the rear of the bus'. Sometimes there is no room, but most of the time, there is some 'deaf' asian lady that just does not care anymore, some junkie nutto high outta his gourd, some gang banger macho jerk, or just some asshat with the ear-buds turned up too high just standing by the rear door refusing to move. So now you spend 10 mintues with the driver screaming at all of you on the intercom and a line of people outside banging on the windows to get on as they are already late for work. Now you get to sit in stop-n-go traffic just like the rest of the plebs trying to inch under the 405 on Santa Monica Blvd. I have shuffled faster than that bus on that stretch. You sway back and forth as the driver jams on the brakes and horn and some idiot beemer cuts off a fucking bus for the 10th time this ride. But hey! No waiting in traffic!
Oh, and you have to wait for the bus too! It'll never be on time, you can bet on that, but you can't tell when it will come. They tried to get GPS trackers on them for use with an app, but then that would prove that they are stuck in horrible traffic, so they took them off. Now you have to get there 'on time' and just wait. Are you sprinting for the bus to make it and you make eye contact with the driver, thinking that they will maybe pause a second for you and let you on? I have done that and seen them smile at me, give me the finger, and close the door in my face while laughing. No matter, the next bus is scheduled to be there in 30 minutes +/- 30 more minutes. Those meetings you had? Poof! Oh, great now you get to sit at the bus-stop on Santa Monica at rush hour. Horns are blaring for almost no reason, some Porsche is revving his engine for some chick in the passenger seat at 8 am, exhaust is pouring out of some truck 'rollin coal'. You want to take a seat, but you know better than to sit on that thing. Last week you saw the bum (who has claimed that area of sidewalk and is still there every day and night for years) piss and puke all over it at 7:45 am. Who knows what drugs they were coming on or off of. At first you thought they just needed help and you gave them a $10 to get on with their lives. But no, the reason they are there, homeless, is that they are insane assholes. Not just mentally crazy, that disease is just tough. But they are also jackasses too. Like, mug your girlfriend last night, and then get up in her face the very next morning demanding that she give him more money that you can clearly see he just spent on Mickey's 40s now smashed all over the bus-stop and now, oh there he goes, taking a piss all over the bus-stop. You call LAPD, and they say sure, they'll send someone out. The third time this happens, you finally get irate enough and they do send someone out. The bum is not there for a few days, and then due to overcrowding in the county jail, his junkie ass is back on the exact same bus stop within a week, because in the bum society that is 'his' stop.
Oh, and then one of the really messed up bums trys to get on the bus with you all that fine morning. You know what a 'piss-bus' is? That bum goes to the middle of the bus and then takes the most foul smelling deification and urination you have ever experienced. Literally, it smells like death. Who knows what combo of dehydration and methadone did what to their overtaxed kidneys and liver, but it seems only to have made them more efficient at making their excrements so concentrated as to be military weapons. I only made the mistake of getting onto a piss bus once. Everyone else at the stop that morning knew that an empty bus and one bum in the middle meant it was a piss bus, but I had not yet learned. I stepped on, the door closed, and immediately I regretted the decision. My eyes were watering from the ammonia, I was gagging, I got off as soon as I could, and I washed the clothes 3 times with bleach before the smell came off. This is not hyperbole. Why can't you kick them off the bus or not let them on in the first place? Civil rights violations and many lawsuits.
This is not every time that you step on the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, maybe a time in 50 are things really bad. But you can expect at least 2 of those lesser types of incidents every week.
Did not exist at the time. Also, most folk that take the bus can't afford Uber let alone expect that one will get to them, pick them up, and get to work in a shorter time than the crummy bus will.
Many trips are $5 or less in the pool, feasible by just about anyone a couple of times a month. We use it for exactly that purpose, when the metro is inconvenient.
Also, have you actually taken the Santa Monica Big Blue Buses ever? Have you tried to commute on them?
(Friday rant time:) They are the main public transit form on the westside. I rode them to UCLA for ~2 years. I'll never do it again. A bus driver in LA is sick of all the shit that is LA traffic. They use the gas and brake without thought to the transmission or brake-pads. You are jerking back and forth the entire time, a real ab workout for the hour it takes to get under the 405. Also, you have to stop the bus and, you know, pick up passengers. This can take 5 minutes or more per stop, though average is about 1 minute. But you never know how many wheelchairs they are going to try to fit on the bus that day, a 10 minute wait. There are also tons of people just trying to scam their way on. Every morning the bus driver has to spend 3 minutes at some random stop trying to get a person to understand that it is $1.25 to ride, but they always forget to speak english or spanish, go mute, or try to fake sign language and just keep walking on. The driver stops the bus now and turns it off, per union rules, calls dispatch, and then we all have to wait for that jackass to get his butt hauled off the damn bus by some LAPD person or they chicken out and actually get off the bus. But it's ok, right, you are not in traffic! Oh, but wait, you are now spending, on a good day, ~1 hour standing on the bus, because they only run 2 of the #1 buses and everyone on the westside is trying to get under the 405, about 70 people per bus. Some crackhead lady is now ranting at some old man about since she is a woman, he should get up and give her his seat. Now the driver, who for some stupid reason decided to not just skip that stop, like they do for yours every other morning, is screaming at people to 'move to the rear of the bus'. Sometimes there is no room, but most of the time, there is some 'deaf' asian lady that just does not care anymore, some junkie nutto high outta his gourd, some gang banger macho jerk, or just some asshat with the ear-buds turned up too high just standing by the rear door refusing to move. So now you spend 10 mintues with the driver screaming at all of you on the intercom and a line of people outside banging on the windows to get on as they are already late for work. Now you get to sit in stop-n-go traffic just like the rest of the plebs trying to inch under the 405 on Santa Monica Blvd. I have shuffled faster than that bus on that stretch. You sway back and forth as the driver jams on the brakes and horn and some idiot beemer cuts off a fucking bus for the 10th time this ride. But hey! No waiting in traffic!
Oh, and you have to wait for the bus too! It'll never be on time, you can bet on that, but you can't tell when it will come. They tried to get GPS trackers on them for use with an app, but then that would prove that they are stuck in horrible traffic, so they took them off. Now you have to get there 'on time' and just wait. Are you sprinting for the bus to make it and you make eye contact with the driver, thinking that they will maybe pause a second for you and let you on? I have done that and seen them smile at me, give me the finger, and close the door in my face while laughing. No matter, the next bus is scheduled to be there in 30 minutes +/- 30 more minutes. Those meetings you had? Poof! Oh, great now you get to sit at the bus-stop on Santa Monica at rush hour. Horns are blaring for almost no reason, some Porsche is revving his engine for some chick in the passenger seat at 8 am, exhaust is pouring out of some truck 'rollin coal'. You want to take a seat, but you know better than to sit on that thing. Last week you saw the bum (who has claimed that area of sidewalk and is still there every day and night for years) piss and puke all over it at 7:45 am. Who knows what drugs they were coming on or off of. At first you thought they just needed help and you gave them a $10 to get on with their lives. But no, the reason they are there, homeless, is that they are insane assholes. Not just mentally crazy, that disease is just tough. But they are also jackasses too. Like, mug your girlfriend last night, and then get up in her face the very next morning demanding that she give him more money that you can clearly see he just spent on Mickey's 40s now smashed all over the bus-stop and now, oh there he goes, taking a piss all over the bus-stop. You call LAPD, and they say sure, they'll send someone out. The third time this happens, you finally get irate enough and they do send someone out. The bum is not there for a few days, and then due to overcrowding in the county jail, his junkie ass is back on the exact same bus stop within a week, because in the bum society that is 'his' stop.
Oh, and then one of the really messed up bums trys to get on the bus with you all that fine morning. You know what a 'piss-bus' is? That bum goes to the middle of the bus and then takes the most foul smelling deification and urination you have ever experienced. Literally, it smells like death. Who knows what combo of dehydration and methadone did what to their overtaxed kidneys and liver, but it seems only to have made them more efficient at making their excrements so concentrated as to be military weapons. I only made the mistake of getting onto a piss bus once. Everyone else at the stop that morning knew that an empty bus and one bum in the middle meant it was a piss bus, but I had not yet learned. I stepped on, the door closed, and immediately I regretted the decision. My eyes were watering from the ammonia, I was gagging, I got off as soon as I could, and I washed the clothes 3 times with bleach before the smell came off. This is not hyperbole. Why can't you kick them off the bus or not let them on in the first place? Civil rights violations and many lawsuits.
This is not every time that you step on the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, maybe a time in 50 are things really bad. But you can expect at least 2 of those lesser types of incidents every week.
But hey, you aren't sitting in traffic!