7 ms·

It also helps that Europe and its cities are ... smaller.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
I don't know if you're thinking about area or population, but by either metric London is bigger than any city in the US, and has a much better public transport system.
- afarrell 10y ago
  It also helps significantly that London's busses are double-decker and come more often so you don't have to wait as long for a bus you can board. (I lived in Cambridge, MA for many years and this wasn't rare with the #1 bus)
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    The most aggravating thing that I saw about the #1 was it was on a nominally ~10 minute schedule at peak times. Pretty regularly, I'd wait 20+ minutes only to see three #1 buses, nose-to-tail, arriving.
- argonaut 10y ago
  The New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas are larger in area than the London metropolitan area The NY metro area is much more populous than London, and the LA metro area is very slightly less populous.
  - foldr 10y ago
    >The NY metro area is much more populous than London, and the LA metro area is very slightly le Well, 14 million vs 20 million is not such a big difference. And the definition of metropolitan areas is somewhat arbitrary in any case.
    - rys 10y ago
      There are numerous entire countries that have populations smaller than that 42% difference.
      - foldr 10y ago
        Well, sure, but it's less than a 2x difference relatively speaking, and it doesn't really have big implications for public transport.
  - lqdc13 10y ago
    NYC transportation sucks even within areas where the population is very dense. It takes 2 hours to get from Bronx to Coney Island on subway. Plus there are almost daily service disruptions of all kinds. San Francisco's Bart is hated by almost everyone but it is much faster[1]. In fact, I have never taken a slower subway than NYC subway. [1] https://flic.kr/p/7LhwPz https://flic.kr/p/7LhwPz
    - MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
      > It takes 2 hours to get from Bronx to Coney Island on subway That's a bizarre example. Of course it takes a long time to go from one corner of the city to the other. No reasonable person would be making that commute regularly.
      - lqdc13 10y ago
        The point is that the subway is slow and unreliable unless you are commuting within Manhattan for 4 stops. Lots of people work in Manhattan and commute from Brooklyn. It's a 1.5 hr train ride to Columbus Circle + 0-60 minute random slowdown where you may have to take the train in the opposite direction for a bunch of stops. Sometimes they actually tell you to get off the train, take a shuttle bus and get back on the train. Other times the train stops 8 subway stops from where you have to be with an inaudible message from the conductor. As a result, you are stuck the middle of nowhere at 8 PM on a Saturday. Only option is to take a local bus (that tends to be much more reliable) or Uber. This kind of treatment is unheard of in any European country including Russia. It could have been a 45 + 0-5 variation minute ride if trains ran as fast and reliably as they do in almost every other city.
- gurgeh 10y ago
  It's probably a function of both population and area: higher population density makes mass transit more efficient. Europe is much more densely populated than the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...
- rtpg 10y ago
  the right word is "denser". American cities are built for cars, so even if you take a bus somewhere you're now walking 15 minutes between buildings. This can be solved on a small scale (build "pockets" of livability), but mass transit will have a harder time surviving without other urbanization changes
  - kobeya 10y ago
    > build "pockets" of livability That was a very loaded word to use. The problem is many people consider dense urban neighborhoods to be unlivable..
    - ericd 10y ago
      And many prefer it to living in the sprawl.
- kobeya 10y ago
  san Jose alone is about 1/3 of the size of the entire London metropolitan area, and that's just one part (albeit a big one) of the south bay area.
- vacri 10y ago
  The conurbation that New York is part of is much bigger than London. The London metropolitan area is about 8.5k square kilometers. The New York metropolitan area is about 35k.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  Houston and Jacksonville are bigger in area and I am sure some other American cities are as well.
- deaddodo 10y ago
  > but by either metric London is bigger than any city in the US That's not even NEAR true. Los Angeles metro is 12,562 sq km, whilst "Greater London" is 1,569 sq km. The LA Metro has 12.8m residents, while GL has 8.6m. So, by either metric, they're much smaller.
IanCal 10y ago
I always dislike these comparisons. The truth is simply that it depends. You can't justify an unknown city having a certain quality of bus routes compared to a diverse range of tens of countries by saying "it's smaller". It'd be slower and more expensive in some parts of the UK, easier in others and in some countries I assume you'd be expected to just cycle the 6 miles.
- Arnt 10y ago
  Which ones would that be? 6 miles is 10 km, that's a nice ride but I've never heard of traffic planners that expect 10km rides.
  - IanCal 10y ago
    Maybe I'm totally wrong on this, I guess it just didn't seem like an odd choice in the UK and other countries have much stronger focus on cycling. "People I know" will be a hugely unrepresentative sample though. For another unrepresentative sample, cycling commuters on strava average a bit over 10 miles: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-paint-picture-british-cyclists-compare-151542 http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-pai... I can't find the stat I want for Copenhagen, they have 1/3rd to 1/2 of people commuting by bike but I can't find out how many journeys of ~10km are completed by bike. I know it's a small number of cycle journeys, as many are shorter, but that's not quite what I'm after.
    - CalRobert 10y ago
      It may be over half commuting by bike now. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revolution-bikes-outnumber-cars-first-time-copenhagen-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revol... I can't seem to find mode share as a function of commute distance. Pure anecdata, but when I worked in El Segundo and lived in Santa Monica, I usually cycled the 12 miles to work. It took about 5 minutes longer than the drive.
      - IanCal 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kuschku 10y ago
Europe, as a whole, is actually quite similar in size. But you are right that the cities are more dense. That's a problem you created yourself, though. You can't say "this would never work here, because we'd never try". If you change your cities, it would definitely work.
jsemrau 10y ago
European cities are not smaller in terms of population or services offered. It's just European cities are better planned compared to most American cities. This whole "suburban" lifestyle .....
- kobeya 10y ago
  Some people like suburbia.
  - wcummings 10y ago
    People liking something doesn't make it sustainable.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    Some people like helicopters too; that doesn't mean cities should require all houses to have helipads.
  - jsemrau 10y ago
    Suburbia has the benefits of affordable housing at the cost of transportation. That's why it was such a successful concept. In many non-American cities proximity to trainstations increases housing cost. With the colonization of America and the technical innovation of the automobile this was no longer deemed necessary.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
Yes, but the physical size of American cities was a deliberate choice on our part. We could have had denser cities if we wanted, and we could fix that starting today if we wanted.
- celticninja 10y ago
  If your corporate overlords wanted to you mean. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
CalRobert 10y ago
Perhaps that could serve as a guide for planning councils in the US who wish to improve their cities.
kalleboo 10y ago
Even so, even more sparsely population areas in Europe have better public transport than many US cities. When I started in uni in Sweden, before I found a local apartment I had to commute from my parent's place. The commute basically crossed a county with a population density of 120 ppl/km2. They lived in a village of 4000 ppl, and I commuted through farmlands, connecting in a city of 100,000 ppl to the student town of 90,000 ppl. It was about 70 km (43 mi) and 50 minutes each way (1 regional bus, 1 train, 1 city bus). Despite this, there were interlocking combinations of these trains+buses about every 20 minutes.
arethuza 10y ago
FYI Europe the continent (10,180,000 km2) is larger in area than the USA the country (9,833,520 km2).
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  Where does your definition of Europe end? NATO? The Urals? Minsk and London might as well be in entirely different civilizations. And it's not like your values are substantially different.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    It's not really my definition of Europe - that is why I was careful to say the continent of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe

I don't know if you're thinking about area or population, but by either metric London is bigger than any city in the US, and has a much better public transport system.

afarrell 10y ago
It also helps significantly that London's busses are double-decker and come more often so you don't have to wait as long for a bus you can board. (I lived in Cambridge, MA for many years and this wasn't rare with the #1 bus)
- sokoloff 10y ago
  The most aggravating thing that I saw about the #1 was it was on a nominally ~10 minute schedule at peak times. Pretty regularly, I'd wait 20+ minutes only to see three #1 buses, nose-to-tail, arriving.
argonaut 10y ago
The New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas are larger in area than the London metropolitan area The NY metro area is much more populous than London, and the LA metro area is very slightly less populous.
- foldr 10y ago
  >The NY metro area is much more populous than London, and the LA metro area is very slightly le Well, 14 million vs 20 million is not such a big difference. And the definition of metropolitan areas is somewhat arbitrary in any case.
  - rys 10y ago
    There are numerous entire countries that have populations smaller than that 42% difference.
    - foldr 10y ago
      Well, sure, but it's less than a 2x difference relatively speaking, and it doesn't really have big implications for public transport.
- lqdc13 10y ago
  NYC transportation sucks even within areas where the population is very dense. It takes 2 hours to get from Bronx to Coney Island on subway. Plus there are almost daily service disruptions of all kinds. San Francisco's Bart is hated by almost everyone but it is much faster[1]. In fact, I have never taken a slower subway than NYC subway. [1] https://flic.kr/p/7LhwPz https://flic.kr/p/7LhwPz
  - MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
    > It takes 2 hours to get from Bronx to Coney Island on subway That's a bizarre example. Of course it takes a long time to go from one corner of the city to the other. No reasonable person would be making that commute regularly.
    - lqdc13 10y ago
      The point is that the subway is slow and unreliable unless you are commuting within Manhattan for 4 stops. Lots of people work in Manhattan and commute from Brooklyn. It's a 1.5 hr train ride to Columbus Circle + 0-60 minute random slowdown where you may have to take the train in the opposite direction for a bunch of stops. Sometimes they actually tell you to get off the train, take a shuttle bus and get back on the train. Other times the train stops 8 subway stops from where you have to be with an inaudible message from the conductor. As a result, you are stuck the middle of nowhere at 8 PM on a Saturday. Only option is to take a local bus (that tends to be much more reliable) or Uber. This kind of treatment is unheard of in any European country including Russia. It could have been a 45 + 0-5 variation minute ride if trains ran as fast and reliably as they do in almost every other city.
gurgeh 10y ago
It's probably a function of both population and area: higher population density makes mass transit more efficient. Europe is much more densely populated than the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...
rtpg 10y ago
the right word is "denser". American cities are built for cars, so even if you take a bus somewhere you're now walking 15 minutes between buildings. This can be solved on a small scale (build "pockets" of livability), but mass transit will have a harder time surviving without other urbanization changes
- kobeya 10y ago
  > build "pockets" of livability That was a very loaded word to use. The problem is many people consider dense urban neighborhoods to be unlivable..
  - ericd 10y ago
    And many prefer it to living in the sprawl.
kobeya 10y ago
san Jose alone is about 1/3 of the size of the entire London metropolitan area, and that's just one part (albeit a big one) of the south bay area.
vacri 10y ago
The conurbation that New York is part of is much bigger than London. The London metropolitan area is about 8.5k square kilometers. The New York metropolitan area is about 35k.
samfisher83 10y ago
Houston and Jacksonville are bigger in area and I am sure some other American cities are as well.
deaddodo 10y ago
> but by either metric London is bigger than any city in the US That's not even NEAR true. Los Angeles metro is 12,562 sq km, whilst "Greater London" is 1,569 sq km. The LA Metro has 12.8m residents, while GL has 8.6m. So, by either metric, they're much smaller.

IanCal 10y ago

I always dislike these comparisons. The truth is simply that it depends. You can't justify an unknown city having a certain quality of bus routes compared to a diverse range of tens of countries by saying "it's smaller". It'd be slower and more expensive in some parts of the UK, easier in others and in some countries I assume you'd be expected to just cycle the 6 miles.

Arnt 10y ago
Which ones would that be? 6 miles is 10 km, that's a nice ride but I've never heard of traffic planners that expect 10km rides.
- IanCal 10y ago
  Maybe I'm totally wrong on this, I guess it just didn't seem like an odd choice in the UK and other countries have much stronger focus on cycling. "People I know" will be a hugely unrepresentative sample though. For another unrepresentative sample, cycling commuters on strava average a bit over 10 miles: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-paint-picture-british-cyclists-compare-151542 http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-pai... I can't find the stat I want for Copenhagen, they have 1/3rd to 1/2 of people commuting by bike but I can't find out how many journeys of ~10km are completed by bike. I know it's a small number of cycle journeys, as many are shorter, but that's not quite what I'm after.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    It may be over half commuting by bike now. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revolution-bikes-outnumber-cars-first-time-copenhagen-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revol... I can't seem to find mode share as a function of commute distance. Pure anecdata, but when I worked in El Segundo and lived in Santa Monica, I usually cycled the 12 miles to work. It took about 5 minutes longer than the drive.
    - IanCal 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kuschku 10y ago

Europe, as a whole, is actually quite similar in size. But you are right that the cities are more dense. That's a problem you created yourself, though. You can't say "this would never work here, because we'd never try". If you change your cities, it would definitely work.

jsemrau 10y ago

European cities are not smaller in terms of population or services offered. It's just European cities are better planned compared to most American cities. This whole "suburban" lifestyle .....

kobeya 10y ago
Some people like suburbia.
- wcummings 10y ago
  People liking something doesn't make it sustainable.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  Some people like helicopters too; that doesn't mean cities should require all houses to have helipads.
- jsemrau 10y ago
  Suburbia has the benefits of affordable housing at the cost of transportation. That's why it was such a successful concept. In many non-American cities proximity to trainstations increases housing cost. With the colonization of America and the technical innovation of the automobile this was no longer deemed necessary.

TulliusCicero 10y ago

Yes, but the physical size of American cities was a deliberate choice on our part. We could have had denser cities if we wanted, and we could fix that starting today if we wanted.

celticninja 10y ago
If your corporate overlords wanted to you mean. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...

CalRobert 10y ago

Perhaps that could serve as a guide for planning councils in the US who wish to improve their cities.

kalleboo 10y ago

Even so, even more sparsely population areas in Europe have better public transport than many US cities. When I started in uni in Sweden, before I found a local apartment I had to commute from my parent's place. The commute basically crossed a county with a population density of 120 ppl/km2. They lived in a village of 4000 ppl, and I commuted through farmlands, connecting in a city of 100,000 ppl to the student town of 90,000 ppl. It was about 70 km (43 mi) and 50 minutes each way (1 regional bus, 1 train, 1 city bus). Despite this, there were interlocking combinations of these trains+buses about every 20 minutes.

arethuza 10y ago

FYI Europe the continent (10,180,000 km2) is larger in area than the USA the country (9,833,520 km2).

ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
Where does your definition of Europe end? NATO? The Urals? Minsk and London might as well be in entirely different civilizations. And it's not like your values are substantially different.
- arethuza 10y ago
  It's not really my definition of Europe - that is why I was careful to say the continent of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe