As far as I can tell, that's only true in fairly unique situations, though, in the super-cities. I live in a decently sized city (metro population of perhaps 3 million people, around 25th in the US I believe) with a transit system mostly regarded as 'pretty good' (but no subway, just light rail and buses) and it would be rare even at rush hour for a car not to be faster. Usually signficantly so.

I think what it comes down to is that if you have a subway system, that will probably beat cars, in the limited area it serves. Once you have to do transfers to buses, it gets much slower. In the places I've visited with subway systems (SF, DC primarily) this is definitely the case.

The US, even cities with “pretty good” transit by local standards, had appallingly bad transit and car-optimized cities.

Here's an interesting overview of US cities mass transit by an urban planner from Houston (an admittedly vary car centric place.) https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/7/18131132/public-tran...

US transit is heavily optimized for cars, even in places with pretty good mass transit. Don't let your personal experience with US metros color your expectations for what public transit can be.

> with a transit system mostly regarded as 'pretty good'

That's probably US bias, because as far as I can tell by reporting US public transport is generally very bad and far worse in big cities compared to much smaller cities elsewhere.

How about once you factor in time to walk to and from the station.

You have to count that against time spent at the gym, not against commute times. :)

Doing this in chicago winter sucks. I did that for many years and now I drive.

Still quicker in London, doubly so if you're including walking to and from the car park.