> To get to the train I walk about 10 minutes from home.

That's great for the people who live a 10 minute walk from the train station. But when the surrounding area is only zoned for low density housing, that constrains the number of such people who can exist and other people will have a two hour walk to the train station.

> I'd time my clocking out with the train so I would ideally only arrive 10 minutes before the train.

You don't choose your hours, your boss does. If there are trains at 2200 and 2430 and your shift ends at 2230, you wait two hours. If there are trains arriving at 2200 and 2430 and your shift starts at 2400, you get there two hours early.

> It's not a bad thing to operate mostly empty buses as long as the full buses can compensate for the efficiency loss.

Yes it is. The two things have nothing to do with each other, because you can run the full buses without running the empty buses. And why run a bus with two people on it (or zero people on it) when the alternative of not running the bus and having those people share an Uber is actually more efficient?

> That solves it for new locations but existing locations will continue to face the same problems.

It solves it for both. If you create a lot of housing in the city at affordable prices then most people who work in the city move into it and get off the roads.

Other people who also work in the city won't want to buy their old homes when there is now equally attractive housing in the city with no commute, so most of the people who buy the old homes will be people who don't work in the city. People who work from home, or work in the suburbs, or want a vacation home.

Alternatively, the low housing costs may attract people from all over to move into the city and increase the population (and therefore average density) which proportionally increases the area over which you can efficiently operate mass transit. If the city becomes popular enough, the high density section expands to consume the suburbs and all the old sprawling single family homes get bulldozed and replaced with tall buildings that have the density needed for mass transit.

> Especially the inner city where I live cannot build larger buildings or become any much denser. The inner city is too old and the design does not permit skyscrapers with efficiency.

The inner city isn't the problem. It already has enough density for efficient mass transit. It's the area just outside the inner city which is the problem.

A good workaround is to build a new transit hub in the middle of a currently low density area just outside the inner city and rezone it for high density. Then people will build high density buildings there because it has a transit hub that goes directly to the inner city and the existing buildings there are cheaper to raze.

> Having train routes to and from major infrastructure hubs and using buses and trams to distribute into the city can get you within a 15 minute walk to and from any destination or origin. And it's cheaper, safer and more efficient than clogging up the city with cars or skyscrapers.

Running empty buses is never efficient, and skyscrapers are the city. There is no traffic congestion in Hamberg, North Dakota because there are no tall buildings there for people to clog the roads getting to.

The problem comes when the city wants to grow and you don't let it grow upward so instead it grows outward and loses the density needed for efficient mass transit.