I’m a former bus operator, now a supervisor. I do drive sometimes still, when we’re shorthanded - and we’re always shorthanded. You get to know the passengers and the routes. You’ll approach a stop and you’ll know before you can even see it. “This lady with her kid will be there to go to school, and then she’ll ride back alone on the inbound trip.” “There are going to be 15 Vietnamese college students boarding here and they will all be polite and they’ll all have their student id’s ready.” And “This stop is going to have 2 drunks and 3 people smoking synthetic. There will probably be someone unconscious and I’ll have to call it in.” 
 So it depends on the stop. Like other drivers say, it comes down to the attitude of the passengers, and the fight against time. Some stops you just know somebody’s gonna get on with a fist full of pennies, get one stuck in the billfeed, jam your fare box, and then be 17 cents short and start soliciting change from the passengers. And then the next guy gets on and asks why you’re late, like it’s something the driver has done. Hint: It’s almost never the driver that makes a bus late. 
 I almost always greet a passenger, and I don’t mind at all if a passenger doesn’t say anything back. But usually they respond in kind. Now that I’m a supervisor I spend most of my time dealing with incidents and accidents at bus stations and on other people’s buses. This is like just the worst parts of bus driving. Except that I now have enough authority that if a passenger is out of line I can kick them off a bus and get them trespassed from all the buses and bus stations. I am in situations constantly where I have to argue with people, but I have to do it in a way that doesn’t expose the agency to liability. I get called racist frequently. I’ve had 3 people threaten me with violence in the last week. So now when I have to drive a bus, it’s so much more pleasant than my other work I’m happy to do it, and I always had a pretty good rapport with customers anyway. 
 So in answer to OP’s question - most of the time - yes.