How does 2x40min add up to three hours?
I used to go to college less than 30 minutes drive away, but I did not have a license or money to drive (Europe) and public transport took 3h in real terms to do that journey.
Sometimes it is not economical to have a car (lack of parking, excessive costs etc;)
Americans tend to measure distance in "time" which doesn't work when you're dealing with alternative transport methods.
For instance someone told me the Philadelphia is "just 3 hours away, so it can't be that far" when I asked him how long it took by train. (it took 5hours in the end)
For very long distances, this correlates to 50-60 miles per hour.
For trips inside an urban area, it's rarely accurate to the nearest 10 minutes.
Also, even if public transport takes ~2x the time of a drive, I still prefer it. That 1h / day in a car as a driver is completely wasted, while the 2h / day in a bus is something I can (and do) use to read books/articles, answer e-mails, etc. I try to schedule my day so that anything I can do on a bus I'll do on a bus.
By car it can take as little as 20 minutes, especially due to a toll motorway which never has traffic.
By bus you must take a 1.5hour bus into Birmingham city center (the bus number 900, goes via the airport), go across the city center on foot (20 minutes) usually wait 10-20 minutes for a 40 minute bus ride (940) into Sutton Coldfield.