Yes, yes to buses and more mass transit.  We need to rebuild the inter-city bus and rail links (especially between small rural towns) that were systematically dismantled over the last 50 years.

However, I think omitting the last five words in this blurb would have been better than mentioning this heinous act - even as an "aside".

I groove to much of the humor and pun-nishment here on Grist, but what happened on that bus in Ontario really doesn't bear mentioning.  It was a terrible act by a disturbed person and we grieve the loss of the young man's life.

... to have fast, frequent, and reliable bus service between (for example) Fort Collins and Denver here in my home state of Colorado.  

It has always mystified me why the demand for such service hasn't been greater, given the abysmal traffic problems and the out-of-control drivers one must tolerate to travel that stretch of highway.

All gruesome stories aside, let's admit that just about every Greyhound Bus ride these days has at least a couple of odd birds on board that creep out ordinary people.  Alas, we have ghettoized inexpensive inter-city bus travel in the same way we have ghetto-ized our K-12 schools, our college system, our neighborhoods.  

As long as our social structure makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, it's gonna be hard to "normalize" a sensible system like inter-city buses in the United States.

I love buses but apparently custom officials do not.  At the US-Canadian border near Vancouver, Canada, bus riders are required to get off the bus with their luggage and file through custom inspections.  Meanwhile, people in cars are generally allowed to stay in their cars and glide by custom officials without luggage inspection.  This disparity in treatment results in extremely long delays for bus riders.  On Saturday, August 2, 2008, it took my bus three and a half hours to cross from Canada into the US.  Almost all this time was spent in a long line of buses waiting to be inspected while the people in cars drove by us. Apparently, custom officials believe that terrorists and smugglers only use mass transit.  

Buses and trains are not for use by people who have jobs...just like unemployment insurance, they are there when your down on your luck...and can't afford the basics: a car.