In Beverly Hills rich man-children with sports cars speed around with bumper stickers showing they donate to the Beverly Hill PD.
Just citing some high-level observations that show some issues.
(I should note that this comparison is no longer as dramatic, since LA has started making at least certain areas denser and more accessible)
[1] I graduated college during a time when the LA economy was sputtering, while SF, NY, London, Seattle, etc were booming, so the only people who stayed in LA were the ones who didn't have much going on.
That said, West LA is a fucking hellscape and the cars are mostly to blame for that.
SF is a pretty mismanaged city in general, but it's telling that complaints about transport are (IME) far less strident than complaints about everything else. There's a floor on how bad your transport experience can be based on the layout of the city: if there as gridlock on every street in San Francisco and all the subways were flooded, I could still easily walk to the equivalent of many, many square miles of a place like LA.