I live on the north side of Chicago and, to be honest, one of my favorite modes of public transit is the express buses that go from Edgewater/Uptown to downtown.

It's MUCH faster than the train, because once it hits the highway, it doesn't stop till it gets downtown.

Dont get me wrong I love the train, but the red line suffers from the same too-many-stops problem.

Express buses thread the needle imo precisely because they hook into existing infrastructure (highways) and still move masses of people

Good point but the solution you are describing is having a tiny minority of busses that move quickly between centers of activity faster rather than decreasing the stops on the vast majority of the line.