Speaking from personal experience here, my commute time tolerance is roughly double if I'm commuting by transit versus driving. In other words, a 60 minute trip by transit is roughly as painful as a 30 minute drive. Other people I've talked to have also expressed similar feelings.

Agreed. I'm not some sort of high powered investment banker who measures minutes wasted in thousands of dollars. I'm just a normal guy, trying to take it easy. I'm not in any huge rush to get anywhere if it's not a hospital, and I'd rather "waste" a few minutes getting driven around town by somebody else in somebody else's vehicle than assume the responsibility and risk of driving myself around.

Sometimes transit or walking simply isn't an option, and in those cases I drive. But given the choice, transit might take a bit longer but it's much lower stress. If a kid jumps out in front of the bus and gets run over, that would ruin my day but not my life. If the same happens when I'm driving a car, that's life altering.

There are lower-stake considerations too: the money I spend on bus fares would doubtlessly otherwise be spend on parking; or I would need to schedule enough time to hunt for free parking which just adds more uncertainty and risk to my day.

I've found pretty much the opposite. People don't consider public transit unless its clearly the better option.

Not sure why you quote average commute times of random cities and what that has to do with comfort of cars v. public transit.

But personally, I prefer to take the subway and read and relax for half an hour before and after work, instead of having to drive in rush hour.

The subway where? Nowhere dense enough to have good subway service is a place where being in a subway car during rush hour is relaxing. I used to take the 1/2/3 in New York to work. It was hellacious. The only thing worse was the 4/5/6.

your implied conclusion is that its better to drive doesn't stand up.

You _can't_ drive to central paris. London you're looking at a £15 charge and a time penalty of ~15-45 minutes.

Public transport to and from work can be pretty awesome. There’s a lot of stuff you can do, that you wouldn’t be able to do while driving.

Maybe you can, but I get car sick when I try to do anything on the bus. I also spend twice as much time on the bus vs driving - all wasted time because either way I'm staring at the road out the window.

Most jobs aren’t in central Paris.