I agree in the abstract on an individual level. All else being equal, it's very difficult to beat the travel time of your own point to point transport that lea

I agree in the abstract on an individual level. All else being equal, it's very difficult to beat the travel time of your own point to point transport that leaves whenever you want. But the only way that works is with a non-trivial up-front personal cost to obtain that transport, ongoing cost to operate it, and a massive societal investment to ensure you have ample road and parking infrastructure. There's also the consideration that all those point to point journeys and parking at each end is a fairly inefficient way to enable a city's worth of people to move around. There's no way a city like NYC could exist at all if everyone relied on cars for transportation. A point-to-point personal car journey in NYC may in theory be faster than taking public transit, but it would be impossible for everyone to do that as the car transit times would trend towards infinity as everyone is stuck in traffic. And because of the increased density a non car-centric city allows, you can actually shrink public transit times too because things can be closer together and transit can run more often and have more routes. And the increased density also allows point to point personal transport other than cars to be practical, like walking or cycling.