I would say the trip you have chosen is the dream trip of highway planners, because 90% of it goes through a highway and bypasses the heavy city traffic altogether. In contrast, the public transportation option needs to send the passenger to a hub in the city and in the end the passenger covers far more distance going into the city and out. Let me now create a similar trip for you in London. Say you are travelling from Enfield in the northeastern outskirts of London to Brunel University in the west, just to the north of Heathrow Airport. For this trip, DC's Beltway (I-495) is replaced by London's M25 that circles the city in similar fashion. Luckily, both the start and end points of the journey are near M25, so Google Maps would indicate a total distance of about 34 miles that can be taken in 46 minutes. But using public transport, you would use 2 buses and 2 metro trips (Bus 121 to Oakwood Station on Piccadilly Line, then switch to the Metropolitan Line at King's Cross until Uxbridge and finally take Bus U3 to Brunel University), which would take about 2 hours. So I have the following 2 points to make:
- If a large part of a trip in a metropolitan area takes place on highways, it can be especially fast, but then at rush hours even highways come to a standstill. I have lived in the DC area for a year and I know from experience that it could easily take 40 minutes to cover I495 part of your trip from the I270 junction to the Greenbelt junction, so during rush hour the entire trip could well end up longer than one and a half hour.
- Public transportation works especially great if you work in the downtown, live in a suburb and the two are connected by a single line. In Washington DC many
outlying metro stations have "Park&Ride" carparks so you drive with your car to the station in the morning, and go to the city center by metro.