Indeed. Let me use an example:

I want to fly into LAX and use public transportation to get to my grandfather's house in Simi Valley.

1. Wait for 15 minutes, then spend 15 minutes on the G shuttle from LAX to the Green Line Aviation Blvd. stop.

2. Take the Green Line to the Rosa Parks stop.

3. Switch to the Blue Line and take it to 7th St./Metro Center.

4.Switch to the Red Line. Take it to Union Station. Total time elapsed for steps 2-4: 90 minutes.

5. Wait for 30 minutes and then take a n often-less-than-once-hourly Metrolink from Union Station to Simi Valley (45 minutes).

6. Figure out how to get from Simi Valley's Metrolink station to my grandpa's house: perhaps there's bus service, which would add another 30 minutes (at least) to the trip. If not, take a cab.

So, using trains and maybe a bus or two, you'd have to figure on anywhere from 3 hours 30 minutes to 4 hours (and maybe more).

Guess how long this trip takes via car. Try 45 minutes. In rush hour traffic, maybe 1:30.

And if my grandpa lived in Thousand Oaks? There's no train service there, so I'd be out of luck.

Having said that, the above trip *does* sound rather fun to me...if I had no time commitments...

If you're trying to go downtown, it'd actually be faster to fly into Burbank and take the Metrolink from Burbank Airport Station to Union Station. But then again, where would you go once you hit there? Hollywood and Long Beach are about the only places reachable by the Metro (as people above have illustrated).

Dude, you need a car.