I find them to be far more useful than the CT bars.
Both seem to be intended to tell you who or what's going next, however the lists actually tell you this information whereas the CT bars do not. To illustrate what I mean, suppose we have a fast character (let's say Edward) and a slow character (let's say Cid). Edward's CT bar is almost empty but Cid's is almost full. Who's going next? You may say Cid is going next because his bar is almost full, but then again, even though Edward's bar is almost empty, he's so fast that he might just get a turn before Cid. So what do the CT bars tell me then? Nothing useful as far as I can tell. At least with the list, I can look at it and for example say "alright, Edward will indeed get a turn before Cid so I'll get Cecil to heal him now rather than attacking and waiting for Cid to heal him because he will have auto-hid by then."
Another thing is that I have never seen a game with CT bars that also displayed the CT bars of the monsters, whereas the games with the turn lists generally display not only character turns, but also monster turns and slow actions (such as spells and other things that don't resolve immediately). It would really be nice to know when, say, Meteor will resolve so I can judge my characters' actions accordingly.
Plus it's always nice to have an "in-between" option between FF1's completely turn-based structure and Active Time where the battle time ticks away and monsters attack you while you're making decisions.
