Re: British buses are embarrassing
"(The UK exception is London, where the Oystercard actually works pretty well. Do any other big UK cities have something similar? The only one I go to these days in Glasgow, which doesn't.)"
Back when I was a kid, the new county of Tyne & Wear was invented. Part of that was the creation of the Tyne & Wear Passenger Transport Executive. All the local council bus services were transferred to it's control. Then the Tyne & Wear Metro system was built. Everything was intergrated, including the cross-Tyne Ferry. You could buy a ticket from anywhere to anywhere and change as required between bus, metro and ferry and the price was based on the zone boundaries crossed. Buses were generally timed to match with the Metro light rail system, especially at the main interchanges. It worked really well and prices were pretty reasonable. Then they privatised the buses and over a period of a few years, the buses no longer matched the Metro station arrival/departure times, the buses were dirty, the prices went up and the bus tickets and Metro tickets were no longer interchangeable.
In recent years, they have come up with the new and wonderful idea of inventing integrated combination tickets which let you travel on the buses and the the Metro. Whoop-de-doo.