On Public Transport

9th on the list of "best cities to live car free" is beautiful Los Angeles. I quote: "Due to its extensive public transit system the area has avoided a complete automobile-based culture."

Suppose, for a moment, that you want to take a MetroLink train from Los Angeles to Irvine. Essentially, there is one train an hour. This is important, because trains are routinely 30+ minutes late. If you're departing in the morning, you better not miss the 8:00am train because the next one isn't until 12:45pm. If you're departing in the evening, you better not miss the 6:30pm train because the next one isn't until... The following morning. And once you get off the train, good luck getting to wherever it is that you actually need to go, because everything is miles apart.

As an example, let's say you lived in Fountain Valley, and were in downtown Los Angeles for the day. Things didn't go as scheduled, and it's 9:15pm. You search on Google Maps to see what you can take to get home. If you drove in your own car, it would take 45 minutes. Instead, this is what Google tells you: 6 hours, 32 minutes. You can't take a taxi, because that comes out to $130.

Your options at this point are as follows:
A. Go for the trek. You'd have to be very brave to wander around public transit for 7 hours at night in Los Angeles.
B. Stay at a hotel for the night, and go home in the morning.
C. Take public transport to LAX, and then hop on an airport shuttle. This isn't cheap either, and it takes close to 2 hours to get from downtown Los Angeles to the airport on public transport. Google Maps suggests that if you drive, it will only take 23 minutes. You can't take a taxi because that's $67 and if you combine that with the airport shuttle fare, you might as well take the taxi all the way home.
D. Hitchhike.

Orange County has many people living in it, and Fountain Valley is not a small city. Neither is it far from a major interstate. The driving distance is about 38 miles, which is not unreasonable. It's about the same distance as Seattle to Tacoma or Dallas to Fort Worth. Public transport just isn't a realistically feasible option in Los Angeles.