Unless you have exceptionally fast and direct rail, the train is almost always slower than driving, even in Europe, when counted door to door.
Similarly Marseille to Paris is only 3.5h by train while driving is almost 8h. It entirely depends on your source and destination. Between major economic hubs train is usually faster than driving, and as you can see by a significant amount. For other routes the train is similar or slightly slower.
In North America, on the other hand, the train is almost always MUCH MUCH slower than driving, if you can take it at all. Not to mention far more expensive.
Other than that problem, though, I can't imagine a more fun rail business trip than along the beaches of the Pacific.
As more fine grained details, from my place in Burbank to my friend's place in Carlsbad was 99 miles. It took longer to drive that than it takes me to drive from Dallas to Austin with is twice as far.
That's not to say we shouldn't have the trains, it's part of the entire transportation package.
The key is you build the transportation framework first, and let the city grow up around it.
I used to use it all the time, it was only faster than driving on Friday afternoons, and even then half the time it would be quite a close cut.
Much, much more comfortable and fun! But not exactly faster, especially when I counted getting dropped off in time to catch the train and getting picked up on the other end.
Edit: to follow up on your Friday comment. I made the mistake of not driving down on a Friday night, and waited until the next morning. The mistake was not knowing anything about the ponies running that weekend, and half of the LA basin was trying to get there. That was the one and only time I was sitting on the highway where I felt like I was in one of those disaster movies where everyone is trying to flee. I kept looking to see if someone was taking advantage and shooting some b-roll. It took me nearly 6 hours that day.
More so though, door-to-door is probably the most charitable metric for driving compared to trains. I presume door-to-door drive time is not assuming peak rush hour traffic?
Which is what makes the metric a bit weird: (A) makes odd assumptions about traffic conditions, (B) does not take into account that you can save time by being on a train - you can sleep, eat, do work, relax, pee when you want to, whatever.. If you drive door-to-door, all you will have done is likely just driven door to door. Less so with a train trip.
