Are busses really able to solve the transportation issues here?

I've been using METRO for about 3 years now. It's better than my hometown's public transit and better than San Antonio's. But, it's pretty crappy for such a large city. I also lived in Philly for about a year some time ago and their public transit beats Houston's by a wide margin.

This has me thinking if busses really aren't a viable option for a city this sprawling. I would say better interconnections between routes would help. But, with every connection having such lousy dependability (drivers being late or early to a connection) I'm not so sure that would even help.

I know nothing about urban planning to really have an idea on what would fix this. It just seems from my 3 years of having to rely on METRO that it's simply not working for anyone that actually needs to get somewhere on time without blowing 2 hours to get somewhere 30 minutes away.

Maybe a more decentralized form of public transit given a city of this size?