Because most of the mileage is not burned downtown, it's burned by having a bunch of empty buses drive way out of town and pick up in 0 or 1 or 2 people until it fills up right near the center.
If you look at average ridership over time, you'll see that the times when it has 40-60 people on it give an average passenger density much higher than cars, even after averaging in the longer empty miles. (40 passengers is a pretty comfortable, not crowded bus.) Simplifying, but a mile of 40 people, averaged with 10 miles of 1 person, is still an average of 5 people. And those are deliberately bad numbers. As I understand it, average bus occupancy in Seattle is around 10 or 15 people per bus, during non-commuting hours. (Commute is often quite crowded).
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Because most of the mileage is not burned downtown, it's burned by having a bunch of empty buses drive way out of town and pick up in 0 or 1 or 2 people until it fills up right near the center.
If you look at average ridership over time, you'll see that the times when it has 40-60 people on it give an average passenger density much higher than cars, even after averaging in the longer empty miles. (40 passengers is a pretty comfortable, not crowded bus.) Simplifying, but a mile of 40 people, averaged with 10 miles of 1 person, is still an average of 5 people. And those are deliberately bad numbers. As I understand it, average bus occupancy in Seattle is around 10 or 15 people per bus, during non-commuting hours. (Commute is often quite crowded).