Waiting for a bus?

At the last council meeting when discussing the bus shelters for outside Sainsburys the discussion went, we need shelters, followed by, but the bus is only paid for for another year, no one's using it, so it might stop then the bus shelters wont be used. Followed by but if you don't build the shelters, people wont use the buses! You can see where this is going. The shelters of course haven't and wont get built before the money runs out, the bus will stop, and they will shrug there shoulders and say well, nobody used it.
I didn't use it because it doesn't stop anywhere near my house, it costs the same as getting a taxi, especially if we go as a family and it takes nearly an hour by the time we walk to the bus stop, the bus does a tour of all of Ely before dropping us off. It takes 25 minutes to walk there. The bus stops have no information and it's not even clear if you are at the right stop,  so why exactly does noone use the bus again?
Take a plane or a boat about 240miles east to where my mum lives in Holland and there's a bus that stops pretty much 5 miniutes walk from where ever you live, you have a Public Transport pin card that you load up like an oyster card and you can use it on all public transport, country wide. This card can be charged and what you pay is different if you are a student, a pensioner where you pay less or none at all. When you find the bus stop, it tells you what times the buses are and there's a map showing you the route so if you aren't familiar with road names, you can see that you are roughly in the right area. This service has existed since the 80's when the chip card was originally a strip card you bought and the driver stamped each time you travelled.
Here unless you live in a city like Cambridge, London, Bristol etc buses are like unicorns and like Central America, they stop at 4pm. The government blamed the rise in car use on the booming economy rather than the fact that none of the money got invested in public transport. Buses became rare things that only those who are forced to use them use and without things like the Ely and Soham Dial a Ride, which is virtually a charity, those people who relied on services that stopped would literally be trapped in their homes.
Buses in the UK are smelly rotten things full of old people. They could be like dutch buses, full of a full cross section of people, clean, well designed and part of every day life.
Instead as a mother with a baby, I waited for a bus that when it came, I couldn't even get my pram on the bus which looked like it was out of a 70's film. Old ladies shouted "You have to fold it!" at me. I am standing there with a pram and a 2 month old baby, not a 2 year old in a buggy!!! My friend has a similar experience and unlike me who just shook my head and said "I'll have to walk", she gave baby Harriet to the driver to hold, while she folded her Silvercross Sleepover and put it in the luggage area, then held her baby on her lap. Can you imagine? Can you imagine repeating this with the shopping you went into down for as well?
So, what is the future of buses in the UK? Guided busways?
Providing public transport here is a pipe dream. I honestly can't see it ever improving, not now that the car has taken over. There is no going back, mass transportation outside the cities is for old ladies and the odd fly that gets in on a warm day.