> Big cities are more productive! In France (and Germany and the USA)
But then exclusively talks about, and provides data for, only French cities. In addition, their statement really goes against my experience of public transport within the big US cities I have visited.
Public transport in the US is, as a rule, wildly inferior to public transport in the rest of the OECD. But still, all things are relative, and the quality of public transport in the US is more or less on a gradient, with bigger cities generally better than smaller ones.
Another factor is that car ownership is much higher in the US (with the sole exception of NYC), so poor public transport impacts a smaller population. (In car-dependent societies, however, poor infrastructure and traffic congestion can have a similar impact -- limiting the effective "size" of the city -- so it's not like relying on cars lets one escape from this problem). Whereas in the UK, the low quality of public transport (outside of London) is not compensated for by comparably high levels of car ownership.
My company is working on urban-accessibility metrics that should make it much easier to have data-driven discussions about the correlation between transport networks and economics. Can't wait to show that off in a few months.
What are we counting as high levels of car ownership? I always blindly assumed it was pretty high throughout the UK, for exactly the reason you give. I've no data, look forward to reading yours - thanks!
76% of UK households have a vehicle, as opposed to 91% of US households. More than vehicle-ownership, however, significantly higher petrol prices in the UK inhibit usage by a fair amount (2018 averages: $2.50/gal in the US, $7.00/gal in the UK). Finally, most US cities have much better-developed intra-urban motorway networks, rendering the car relatively more effective for commuting. UK urban roads saturate at lower volumes, on average.
So the net result is that the while the UK population has moderately lower rates of actual car ownership -- actual spatial accessibility via the car, in generalised-cost terms (travel time * value-of-time + monetary cost), is substantially lower than in the US.
It's pretty limited: Boston, New York, San Francisco, San Jose.
Yes. Living somewhere is very different to visiting. But I think it's fair to say that experiences of public transport are usually much worse when you live there. That's because you have to experience it during peak times (i.e. getting to work/school) and throughout all the periods of engineering work. And of course you use it a lot more (and will probably better remember the few terrible times it failed compares to the many more boring times it Just Worked).
But maybe I am wrong and there are some bug US cities with great public transport. I'd be genuinely interested to know since the article gave no clues.
Chicago has pretty good public transit. Not Europe/Asia good, but solid. It is different for living and visiting because it is entirely built around getting people into the downtown area (hub and spoke). This makes it harder to go from neighborhood to neighborhood, but easy to go from home to work and back home.
I do see what you are saying, but that neighbourhood to neighbourhood travel pattern is well handled in some places. I guess the geography of somewhere like SF might explain the mess they have going on.
> Big cities are more productive! In France (and Germany and the USA)
But then exclusively talks about, and provides data for, only French cities. In addition, their statement really goes against my experience of public transport within the big US cities I have visited.