Transit planners know that the faster and more convenient transit is, the more people will use it. People are willing to pay to get places faster. In low density, sprawled areas like San Diego, the car is still the fastest way to get around when your choices are the slow bus or the slow trolley. The general momentum of regional plans to expand the freeway and transit systems is to load the freeways until they slow down enough to make the slow transit more usable. Adding another lane of slow traffic is not really what people want.
People are willing to pay to get places faster.
We need to set up systems that take advantage of this market demand and use those payments to fund higher throughput travel. Currently, bus routes in San Diego generally run twice per hour or less and it takes far too long to get to one's destination. Moneys could be usefully spent to add express routes and increase feeder services. One key is choosing systems that provide minimum service levels. Another is designing communities as neighborhoods where people don't have to travel as much, or as far or as often.