It's only surprising if you don't understand the layout of most cities in the western/southern US and how it compares with vastly denser areas in other countrie

It's only surprising if you don't understand the layout of most cities in the western/southern US and how it compares with vastly denser areas in other countries. The cities are specifically designed to be navigated by individual cars. The properties are spread out over a very large area. For many trips, walking from the bus route would take a very long time, and there are sometimes no sidewalks in a few important parts of a route. Because of the long distances and car-centric design, even if the buses were free, they would still be impractical. Even in cases where the commutes are more tolerable, due to the assumption in the designs that everyone will have a car, the great majority do. And so nearly everyone's commute will be somewhere between 100% and 1000% shorter than yours if you choose to use a bus. You will be waiting for the bus for a fair amount of time and then walking long distances. Like where I live currently, if I go into Google Maps and ask it to navigate me to the closest grocery store which is about 3 miles away, when I click the transit icon it gives me a route involving buses but the first part of it is to drive five minutes to get somewhere that the bus goes. And then there are three bus transfers. When I turn off the option of using a car and click on public transit, Google just gives up. This area in general does have a fair number of bus routes. It's just that people live spread out everywhere. Even my apartment complex is actually single story buildings that are attached in a row. The closest main road does not have a sidewalk. I don't have a car so I use Lyft to go everywhere. Luckily I rarely need to go out since I work remotely. I usually just use Instacart, although I skipped that yesterday since the pricing is such a huge markup.