>"Where I live, the focus on buses is driven by a political agenda - basically the environmentalists and the left have defined buses as "good" and cars as "bad"

>"Where I live, the focus on buses is driven by a political agenda - basically the environmentalists and the left have defined buses as "good" and cars as "bad"" That's a bit of a strawman argument, but nevertheless there are strong and indisputable benefits to public transport over cars. One is the pollution. Per passenger, even diesel buses pollute a lot less than cars, and electric buses are being phased in. There are also some buses that run on cleaner-burning natural gas, but those are more of a stopgap measure. Secondly, congestion is markedly reduced by getting more people on public transport and bikes. People simply take up less space when they're not driving around a mostly empty car. Regarding the dust, it's not really produced by the buses, but it does get whirled up more by large vehicles. The dust is produced by everything; cars, buses, trucks, bikes, even pedestrians to some extent. Reducing one of those sources, by for instance getting thousands of people to take the bus instead of driving their cars alone, will significantly reduce particle pollution. >"Unfortunatly, I suspect that research on topics like those is probably heretical and a thought crime in most Universities' departments for environmental studies." That's nonsense. My girlfriend studies at our national technical university and there is plenty research being done on all environmental factors.