Point to point is by definition wasteful. Look at how goods are moved around the globe: it's always hub and spoke because that's what works best rather than an infinite number of dedicated routes. Walk on foot, bike, skateboard, take a bird or lime to a hub and you remove a ton of engineering headaches. You could have the hub to hub route be completely isolated from traffic and pedestrians and many of the highly publicized issues with self driving cars would be eliminated with zero engineering required. But lets keep wasting time and effort figuring out how to make an uber you don't have to talk to during your ride instead.
The hub-and-spoke model is great for moving goods (and people) between cities, but you'll note that pickup and final delivery are still handled by fleets of trucks. Mass transit is well-suited for routes shared by masses of people with minimal luggage all wanting to transit on the same schedule; point-to-point transportation is needed to handle the rest.
What's really wasteful is using point-to-point transit for a task better suited for mass transit—or vice-versa.
