I'll speak in favour of bus lanes. They can and do work, though the devil is always in the details.
When I lived in London and took the tube and buses on a daily basis, I never once saw cars driving in the bus lanes for the simple reason that they were well implemented: the lanes are paved and painted a different colour, comme ca
http://www.freefoto.com/images/2030/14/2030_14_26---Bus-Lane_web.jpg?&k=Bus+Lane
Unless we did something similar here, I doubt there'd be that much compliance. Bluntly put, the road hog population would loathe the damn things and jump into them whenever there wasn't a cop in sight.
And ... if they were lanes lanes that were actually taken away from cars, without any corresponding road widening, good luck. In any car-centric area, the NIMBYs would go absolutely apeshit and stop them from being implemented in the first place. Not to mention the fact that the Ford Brothers would likely make it a personal cause and intervene.
So maybe under a different administration.....
Works nice in theory, but any smart opposing politician would probably ask the following, repeatedly and loud: where are the cops going to come from? From which apparently big surplus pool of officers will they be drawn out of? Will they be pulled off of regular beats? For how long? How much crime will occur because they're not out doing their regular duties? Will limited city resources be allocated towards hiring hiring traffic cops whose sole purpose is to perpetuate a money-grab? Will the anti-car brigade's ticketing be incentivized through commissions? And doesn't everyone know that the first few weeks will always be the most policed, after which any borrowed cops will go back to their regular work and enforcement will be far more sporadic?
Which is a long-ish way of saying that I think compliance will ultimately have to be voluntary, among a population who are supportive.