Out here (vancouver) operators are allowed to skip stops when full, so they are able to recover from this state gracefully.

Depending on the frequency of the bus route I'd prefer adherence to a schedule vs. efforts to minimize bunching. With frequent buses I think the schedule ends up being irrelevant - but if the hourly bus I occasionally take pulls in fifteen minutes early or late then I will be pissed, especially on the early side.

Are they allowed to also skip stops where people want to get off?

Nope, that's pretty silly BS. Apparently Melbourne had some really stupid "efficiency motivators" that made train operators do this, but that's stupid. The transit company/authority/whatever that's in charge knows that the blow back for being late is nothing compared to refusing to let people disembark where they want to, it's also a _bit_ of a sunk cost. When you let someone board you're accepting the time for them to embark and disembark (you need to let them off sometime)... as a driver you would save a bit of time by not pulling into the stop.

Anyways, with downtown buses I'll often do this voluntarily, if the bus is full I'll wait until the stop after mine to pull the cord, and disembark at my stop or one before if someone else is getting off - a block or two of walking isn't going to hurt anyone.

A LOT of people who take the bus here are elderly or disabled.

Clearly not. You’re not going to hold people captive on the bus just to make up a few minutes. However that doesn’t mean the bus drive has to accept new passengers when someone does get off (it’s not common that happens but I have seen that happen before and it’s highly infuriating for those waiting for the bus. Which is likely why it’s not common)

My experience on crowded buses is that typically every stop gets rung for anyway, so skipping isn’t an option.

Of course, if it were possible to open only the back doors and let people off but not on, that might help, at the expense of leaving the people waiting to get on enraged. But then you also have the problem that on a crowded bus it can be really tough to squeeze past the rest of the passengers to get off, which also slows everything down.

The whole thing is miserable, and mostly these routes just need more buses (plus the articulated ones that hold 60% more people).

Vancouver buses have this ability! And they will often specifically refuse to let new people on the bus if they are at or near capacity.

It noticeably speeds up things.

Actually, the train system in Melbourne, Australia was doing exactly this to passengers in the very recent past. The private operators realised that there were penalties for getting to the end of the line late, but not for missing stops, so they just told the passengers who wanted to get off to suck it!