I've been in a number of cities where I don't find buses inferior. For me it's even often my personally preferred means of transit, though I've of course ridden my share of poor buses too.
The good case is when they're: frequent, run on arterial routes (no meandering), don't stop excessively often, have routes designed to avoid big bottlenecks like left-turn waits (or have strategically placed bus-only bypasses for those trouble spots), stop in the rightmost travel lane rather than in pullout bays that require merging back into traffic, and have a streamlined payment system (the last two combining to give low dwell times at stops). Doesn't even have to be BRT, but let's say halfway to BRT.
Two cities with those kinds of buses that I've personally experienced recently: Washington, DC, which has nice arterial routes up/down main roads like Massachusetts Ave and 16th St, and Copenhagen, which has a network of "A bus" [1] routes.
The good case is when they're: frequent, run on arterial routes (no meandering), don't stop excessively often, have routes designed to avoid big bottlenecks like left-turn waits (or have strategically placed bus-only bypasses for those trouble spots), stop in the rightmost travel lane rather than in pullout bays that require merging back into traffic, and have a streamlined payment system (the last two combining to give low dwell times at stops). Doesn't even have to be BRT, but let's say halfway to BRT.
Two cities with those kinds of buses that I've personally experienced recently: Washington, DC, which has nice arterial routes up/down main roads like Massachusetts Ave and 16th St, and Copenhagen, which has a network of "A bus" [1] routes.
[1] https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-bus (in Danish)