Are long roads worth it over trains?

I have a bunch of towns. All of them currently have buses. A few have some trams as well. They are in a somewhat large area. Does it make sense to have buses run on roads between the towns rather than trains?

(I'm using Open GFX+ for both trains & road vehicles.)

Solution 1:

In the short term, busses are better than trains: they're cheaper to build, cheaper to run, and you can use the existing roads rather than needing to bulldoze your way into town.

In the long run, trains beat busses: payment rates for passengers are strongly affected by travel time, and at any given point in time, trains are faster than road vehicles.