As far as I'm aware, the only city in the western world that truly kept its pre-automobile streetcar network was Melbourne, Australia. A result is it today has the largest tram network of any city in the world.

It hurts my soul to imagine how basically every city in North America had similar networks, but they were almost completely annihilated, save for small fragments in a small handful of cities.

They're only faster because transit infrastructure is built exclusively for cars at the expense of everyone else, including car drivers. Driving during rush hour sucks, but many people don't have a choice.

The only thing I wish is that we had more accessible and safe single-seat vehicles. I bring 3 empty seats with me to work every day. I would be more than happy to have a cheap, efficient single seat vehicle for commuting if it was safe. I'm not going to ride a motorcycle 25 miles each way every day in the Florida heat and rain. I'm certainly not going to share the road with the maniacs we have here on a motorcycle.

Ain't nothing comfortable about being in an environment where one wrong move will end your life

But cars have their place.

True. However with all the downsides of cars, they should be only the fallback if most other options don't work. As it is, in many places, they are the highest priority that everything is planned around.

And usage of space. And money, at least if you include all the externalities.

This visualization is space efficiency.

Obviously cars have terrible energy efficiency. The most efficient vehicle is a bicycle, since exercise is good for you it's arguably negative energy usage.

As for time efficiency, you have to consider car dependent development as a package. Everything spreads out, so overall there may not be an improvement in time efficiency, especially when you factor in the longer travel time of people not in cars. You could even consider the time spent working to pay for the car, or the time lost from people killed by the car, and I doubt cars would come out particularly time efficient then.