11 ms·

Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle

121 points by hunglee2 8y ago

karmakaze 8y ago
What kills me about public transit is the variance. One trip in or home can often take 70% longer than another. It kills whatever motivation I started my trip with and I have to work up to it again.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  Subway provides less variance because it is not affected by traffic.
  - karmakaze 8y ago
    I would think so. Unfortunately I'm speaking of a single subway train ride.
cimmanom 8y ago
Every politician and transportation decision maker in the US needs to read this one. That goes double for the collection of clowns who are letting New York’s transit systems rot.
- kingosticks 8y ago
  Weirdly the caption above the first graph states: > 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.
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    Visiting a city is far different from living and working in a city. To which big US cities are you referring?
    - kingosticks 8y ago
      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.
      - moorhosj 8y ago
        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.
        kingosticks 8y ago
        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.
  - nkoren 8y ago
    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.
    - kingosticks 8y ago
      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!
      - nkoren 8y ago
        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.
lucasverra 8y ago
really enjoyed the paper. Super clear data viz that strikes a point quickly and makes it easy to join the hypothesis. I found it so clear and easy that there is probably some scientific bias that makes it non valid argumentation. If someone could point that out, would be great.
- joshvm 8y ago
  One counter argument is that they probably applied a basic linear least squares fit to the data. Simple linear regression, using the L2 loss i.e. (y-f(x))^2, is extremely sensitive to large outliers (like Birmingham and Manchester). Without more medium-size cities in the 1-2M range it's hard to say for sure. If you didn't have those data points, the story would be that the UK has much more productive cities (per size) than France. The trend line with those two cities removed is far steeper; practically vertical! And in fact if their analysis of Birmingham is correct - that it's effectively a much smaller city and should be placed further left on the graph - then it would also support a much steeper line. This is what the plot looks like without Birmingham and Manchester: https://imgur.com/a/yhT5VoD https://imgur.com/a/yhT5VoD I suspect you'd get a similar result if you used a more robust estimator like the Huber loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huber_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huber_loss What does that tell you? Probably that the population size of British cities is not a good feature to use to estimate productivity. Or that Birmingham and Manchester are outliers - they are huge cities compared to most of the rest of the UK, for a start. That's not to say that the article is wrong. Public transport in large cities is pretty poor outside London. I don't doubt that if Birmingham had a decent mass transit system, it would be more profitable. They also avoided the issue of Manchester, which does have a dense public transport system (similar to Liverpool), but is also punching below its weight. Never mind that they're assuming that France is the benchmark (despite drawing a trend line on the UK), they included Edinburgh which is a capital ...
danielfoster 8y ago
I would be curious to apply this to U.S. cites. Even New York must lose aglomeration benefits because of its unreliable transit structure.
- fsloth 8y ago
  The article suggests a causation, but points out only a correlation without proving it. There are lot of other ways in which French and UK cities are different - there might very well be some other reason why there is a lower 'churn' in UK cities and the lower public transport variable might just be accidentally correlated.
  - toyg 8y ago
    Anecdata: UK elites don’t like living in city centres. Anybody worth anything runs from English city centres as soon as they can afford it. If France is anything like Italy, they take the opposite approach. This might compound the public-transport issue to the point of significance, but such a cultural element won’t be eradicated by simply providing more “poor people’s transport”.
    - timomax 8y ago
      That's completely wrong. UK elites love living in city centres. They also love the countryside. They don't live in the suburbs.
      - toyg 8y ago
        >UK elites love living in city centres. That definitely does not tally with my experience in Manchester and Liverpool. Nobody worth any real money lives in the city, they're all in big Cheshire villas. The young professionals might like to play Friends for a bit, but as soon as they spawn or make real money they're off in a blast. I'd be surprised if Birmingham were any different, considering that city centre in practice is almost non-existent. London and Edinburgh are the only places with real elites living in cities, but they are the exception to the rule.
Theodores 8y ago
Birmingham is a motor city. You don't get a bus, you drive. It is as simple as that. The infrastructure was built for cars and the leafy suburbs have plenty of parking. People drive in and don't get the bus. I use the term 'people' to refer to people with proper jobs, if you work in the NHS as a nurse or if you do cleaning, work in a shop or anything else serving customers then you are waiting an extremely long time for a bus and having quite a walk at the other end. Things may have changed recently but from what I remember you had absolutely silly waiting times after 6.30 p.m. Stay at your desk one minute past 5.30 and you have that thirty minutes of walking and waiting before your bus comes along if you are lucky. There are other factors such as the cost of living in the city. Although not London prices, if you want to 'get on the housing rope-ladder' then you are going to be off the bus route and driving in. People do like their cars in Birmingham, for religious reasons a lot of young men don't drink. This leads to a lot of them taking a lot of pride in their motors to therefore never take the bus. There is a large pedestrianised area in the centre however there are also roads that are as big as motorways going through the city. Things like the exhibition centres and other things alluding to Birmingham's status as second city were very much built with the car in mind. I cycled when I lived there and my experiences of the bus was gained after I got run over by a car from the other carriageway collecting me on his bonnet. The bike didn't take it too well so the bleak misery of the bus was not my choice. The waiting was definitely bad for productivity. There was one other cyclist at that workplace of sixty or so other people and only the receptionist got the bus, starting at 6.30 a.m. from Lichfield to be there before 9. Everyone else drove. I did have reason to drive there once, it was on work business and I made the mistake of taking the wrong exit from 5-ways roundabout. A mile later stuck in the slowest traffic ever in Halesowen I was ready to abandon the car and set light to it. Luckily it wasn't my car so I spent the best part of an hour trying to get back to the right exit of the roundabout. That was not 'productive'.
- mabbo 8y ago
  I think you have cause and effect backwards. Car culture stems from poor planning, from the car being needed to survive. Add in options for not needing a car and the culture will change.
  - 8y ago
lordnacho 8y ago
Interesting read, but I have some issues with it. What's the rationale for not including capitals? Why are they on a different population/productivity scale from 2nd cities? Also I'm not sure I believe the lines. As in, they seem a bit sensitive to me. If Lyon wasn't there the France line would be much flatter. And there's plenty of deviation from either line, there must be significant other factors involved. However I've spent some time in Birmingham and other 2nd cities, and there's something to be said about the argument presented. Particularly in Birmingham, the area is more like a bunch of loosely connected suburbs. Not a lot of tall buildings, lots of separate houses, by the looks of it. A fair few big box store malls. Loads of buses, not much else. You're better off in a car, which presents similar problems.
- tazjin 8y ago
  > What's the rationale for not including capitals? London's infrastructure is not really comparable to other cities in the UK, so it skews the image for the point that the authors are trying to make.
  - toyg 8y ago
    And the same goes for Paris in France.
barrkel 8y ago
This smells a lot like using correlation to hypothesize causation. You could tell a different story about richer cities being able to afford better public transport. Subjectively, most UK cities feel less dense than many continental cities, with less apartment living and more urban streets with two story terraced houses. Could tell a similar story about that. UK laissez-faire local government combined with tribal politics making the ruling party incentivized to starve those local governments of funding - especially transfer funding when Tories are in power and Tory local government is usually restricted to rich areas not needing transfer funding - more material for storytelling. IMO the UK political culture is toxic, education is particularly poor. Everything is centered on London and yet all the elite live outside in the green belt, while crime driven by inequality is rising and police numbers are continually cut, and legal aid is also being cut, leading to mistrials and slow cases due to self representation, and free movement is attacked by all sides. I'm looking for the exit. This place is sick. The next domino will be something even more extreme, and it's chance whether it's left or right extremism.
- 0815test 8y ago
  Crime driven by inequality? It's very plausibly driven by poverty, poor educational system and extreme social marginalisation (i.e. lack of good social capital), but these are not the same thing as "inequality".
  - sprafa 8y ago
    I don’t see a huge difference. Social marginalisation is indeed huge here in Britain.
  - tux1968 8y ago
    I couldn't find a paper with a quick google, but i did hear in a recent podcast that it is exactly income inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) rather than absolute poverty that is the biggest predictor in criminality. Here is a clip that mentions it; if I can find a paper to reference i'll edit this comment when I get home: https://podverse.fm/clips/BJE2hv7gZ https://podverse.fm/clips/BJE2hv7gZ Edit: The connection was made specifically with violent crimes. Here is an article about it that has links to some research papers: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/does-inequality-cause-crime/381748/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/does-in...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Anglena 8y ago
Nice and your information is very good & helpful thanks for sharing. Visit this site plz any software are available with keys <a href="http://licensekeys.co/"> http://licensekeys.co/"> license key </a>
richardcrossley 8y ago
If the headway between buses is greater than 15 minutes, then few people are going to chose it as their transportation option. If one bus fails to show, often enough for me not to bother and walk instead, then you have a 30 minute waiting time at an open bus stop in cold driving rain. Now I live in Asia and the buses are extremely frequent headway is less than 10 minutes, and I have no need for a car.
- falcor84 8y ago
  >Now I live in Asia and the buses are extremely frequent ... Where in Asia? Being home to over half the world's population, it's extremely diverse and my impression is that the average Asian person had much worse access to public transport than the average UK resident.
  - akgerber 8y ago
    The plurality of Asians live in China which has built dozens of metros with thousands of miles of track in recent years: http://www.thatsmags.com/shenzhen/post/19044/china-s-breakneck-metro-system-growth-in-one-gif http://www.thatsmags.com/shenzhen/post/19044/china-s-breakne...
    - robjan 8y ago
      Yes, if you add China, the Four Tigers and Japan then you are already covering 1.6bn people. All of these countries/regions have fantastic public transport in the urban areas.
- akgerber 8y ago
  "Frequency is freedom" is a slogan that bus consultant Jarrett Walker likes: https://humantransit.org/2011/12/how-frequent-is-freedom.html https://humantransit.org/2011/12/how-frequent-is-freedom.htm...
smcl 8y ago
I'm not sure how I feel about this article. I agree overall that UK public transport is generally pretty bad - it gets even worse when you're travelling inter-city and it's poor value for money. But I feel a little bit like this is nicely presented data and a compelling narrative being used to come to a pre-determined conclusion. When the case for Transport=>Productivity is introduced they talk about the GDP vs Population graph in France and indeed start presenting a neat little example that tells the story they want: > For example, Lyon, the second largest city in France, is more productive than Marseille, the third largest city, which is in turn more productive than Lille. Nice and easy, right? However that was a very interesting choice of city to stop at, because the next largest city - Toulouse - has a higher per-capita GDP than both Marseille and Lille. Then the fifth largest - Bordeaux - is higher than Lille and is mere a whisker shy of Marseille. Only after we skip over a number of tightly bunched cities do we see a bit of a cliff where St Etienne, Toulon and Montpellier are smaller and also relatively poorer. You can definitely see something if you squint your eyes and look at the graph, but to me it just looks like the French cities are more equal overall than the British ones. But we know that already if we compare GINI coefficients of the countries as a whole (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...). Most interesting is the massive outlier in the main graph - Edinburgh. It has no metro system to speak of (save for a single expensive and much maligned tram line) and an OK-but-nothing-special bus network. It's certainly not a sprawling city, but it's not compact either. The poorer British cities definitely need some love and investment, and improved public transport will undoubtedly be needed. But this article presents an oversimplification that makes me a little uneasy about accepting any of their conclusions.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- m-i-l 8y ago
  > Most interesting is the massive outlier in the main graph - Edinburgh. Edinburgh shouldn't really be on a graph of non-capital cities, given it gets a number of economic benefits from being a capital city, e.g. being the centre of the Scottish legal system, seat of the Scottish government, most popular tourist destination in the country (as capital cities often are), etc.
timomax 8y ago
Sounds like bs to me. What about countries with no mass transit?
- izacus 8y ago
  Which ones would be that?
  - timomax 8y ago
    Most of them.
    - izacus 8y ago
      I'd really like to have a list since most developed countries do have mass transit system. Can you provide an actual example?
zone411 8y ago
I think a much more likely explanation for Birmingham's low productivity is that it has the highest share of people with no qualifications (education) in the UK and the gap is becoming wider (https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/train-attract-retain-increasing-birminghams-skilled-workforce/birminghams-skills-profile/ https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/train-attract-retain-...).
- jimnotgym 8y ago
  I don't think they are mutually exclusive. I had people with cars turning down a job with me because they couldn't face the 7 mile commute on the edge of town, on a motorway, because it could take them more than an hour.
infinity0 8y ago
What about Manchester??
socks 8y ago
Why did they include Edinburgh in the British non-capital cities list? There are four British capital cities - Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London.
baybal2 8y ago
My suggestion for improvement: UK needs more 20M+ people cities, and more density. What about relocating northern cities population to the South and building new cities there?
gok 8y ago
I'm increasingly frustrated by transit-related articles like this that completely overplay the data they have. If you look at the US metro areas with the highest productivity (defined in this article as GDP/capita) [1], they are definitely not the ones with the best or even extant transit. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/248112/per-capita-us-real-gross-domestic-product-gdp-by-metro-area/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/248112/per-capita-us-rea...
- closeparen 8y ago
  The highest average commute times in the us are under 40 minutes in spite of that [0]. We have enough cars and car infrastructure that only a few % are stuck with buses; their poor performance has little impact on overall journey times. The average is about 25 minutes and it goes up by only a few minutes in especially congested places. (If a 5 minute traffic jam is existentially distressing, wait till you see what waiting for the train is like). https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/650061560/stuck-in-traffic-youre-not-alone-new-data-show-american-commute-times-are-longer https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/650061560/stuck-in-traffic-yo...
- DontGiveTwoFlux 8y ago
  Most of the top areas actually have really good transit, with the exception of Midland (on the list from west Texas oil money) and maybe Des Moines (I’m unfamiliar with it so I’m making an assumption). San Jose and Sunnyvale have the cal train, linking a 50 mile long area into about an hours worth of travel. Bridgeport and Stamford have the metro north train, enabling commutes of 40 miles for tons of people to New York. Consider what would happen to the South Bay if the Cal Train closed, or to Connecticut if the Metro North shut down. Way fewer workers would be able to to live their, and the populations would shift.
dankohn1 8y ago
Compare to this 30 second time lapse of subway growth in China: https://kottke.org/18/01/the-astounding-growth-of-chinas-subway-system-1990-2020 https://kottke.org/18/01/the-astounding-growth-of-chinas-sub...
Reason077 8y ago
There are many possible factors that explain the UK's productivity gap. But ultimately, productivity is mainly an inverse function of labour cost. In economies with a high supply of labour and thus (relatively) low wages, there is less incentive for businesses to invest in labour-saving plant and technology. Why make the risky investment in automation when you can just hire more workers cheaply? The car wash business illustrates this: where there is a good supply of cheap labour, you'll find "hand" car washes with multiple attendants ready to wash your car by hand at any time. But when labour is more scarce and expensive, washing cars by hand isn't really viable. Businesses will instead invest in automatic car wash equipment - and productivity per unit of labour is therefore higher! In (higher productivity) France, automatic car washes are everywhere. In the (lower productivity) UK, there are an awful lot of hand car washes.
- konschubert 8y ago
  So, it’s not an inverse function, but rather positively correlated.
  - Reason077 8y ago
    Yes, that's what I meant to say. Sorry for the "thinko".
keithpeter 8y ago
Quote from OA "The first journey is a bus from the south of the city, Stirchley to, Birmingham. This 3.5 mile journey takes about 20 minutes between 6am and 7am, and about 40 minutes between 8am and 9am." That would be the school run. To test my hypothesis, I'm going to try to run the results during a school holiday in a bit. Very pleased someone has actually done what I have often thought about (but done nothing about) while standing at the 97 bus stop in the rain early in the morning... getting the data from the departure system. I wonder how I can get my hands on a sample of the data...
thewhitetulip 8y ago
If UK public transportation is poor then Indian public transport doesn't exist (excluding the truly epic Delhi Metro)
esotericn 8y ago
Almost all of the analysis done in this article falls flat on its' face because London has been excluded. The UK effectively doesn't exist outside of the South East from the perspective of most individuals with significant wealth or power (central government included).
sgt101 8y ago
Another factor is the density of England vs France; Birmingham is virtually halfway between London and Manchester, both are a fair bit closer to London than Lyon. London is a huge leech pulling economic activity out of the rest of England, and HS2 will make it worse.
oliwarner 8y ago
Say people selling public transport. To anybody living outside London, hyper-centralisation is the obvious problem. Govt has done little in the past two decades to stop every new HQ making London just that little bit more essential. Whole industries need to pull out and other cities get a crack at fresh, planned-ahead growth. Rebuilding London every few years to deal with the latest calamity isn't practical.

121 points by hunglee2 8y ago

What kills me about public transit is the variance. One trip in or home can often take 70% longer than another. It kills whatever motivation I started my trip with and I have to work up to it again.

sanxiyn 8y ago
Subway provides less variance because it is not affected by traffic.
- karmakaze 8y ago
  I would think so. Unfortunately I'm speaking of a single subway train ride.

cimmanom 8y ago

Every politician and transportation decision maker in the US needs to read this one. That goes double for the collection of clowns who are letting New York’s transit systems rot.

kingosticks 8y ago
Weirdly the caption above the first graph states: > 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.
- moorhosj 8y ago
  Visiting a city is far different from living and working in a city. To which big US cities are you referring?
  - kingosticks 8y ago
    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.
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      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.
      - kingosticks 8y ago
        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.
- nkoren 8y ago
  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.
  - kingosticks 8y ago
    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!
    - nkoren 8y ago
      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.

lucasverra 8y ago

really enjoyed the paper. Super clear data viz that strikes a point quickly and makes it easy to join the hypothesis. I found it so clear and easy that there is probably some scientific bias that makes it non valid argumentation. If someone could point that out, would be great.

joshvm 8y ago
One counter argument is that they probably applied a basic linear least squares fit to the data. Simple linear regression, using the L2 loss i.e. (y-f(x))^2, is extremely sensitive to large outliers (like Birmingham and Manchester). Without more medium-size cities in the 1-2M range it's hard to say for sure. If you didn't have those data points, the story would be that the UK has much more productive cities (per size) than France. The trend line with those two cities removed is far steeper; practically vertical! And in fact if their analysis of Birmingham is correct - that it's effectively a much smaller city and should be placed further left on the graph - then it would also support a much steeper line. This is what the plot looks like without Birmingham and Manchester: https://imgur.com/a/yhT5VoD https://imgur.com/a/yhT5VoD I suspect you'd get a similar result if you used a more robust estimator like the Huber loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huber_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huber_loss What does that tell you? Probably that the population size of British cities is not a good feature to use to estimate productivity. Or that Birmingham and Manchester are outliers - they are huge cities compared to most of the rest of the UK, for a start. That's not to say that the article is wrong. Public transport in large cities is pretty poor outside London. I don't doubt that if Birmingham had a decent mass transit system, it would be more profitable. They also avoided the issue of Manchester, which does have a dense public transport system (similar to Liverpool), but is also punching below its weight. Never mind that they're assuming that France is the benchmark (despite drawing a trend line on the UK), they included Edinburgh which is a capital ...

danielfoster 8y ago

I would be curious to apply this to U.S. cites. Even New York must lose aglomeration benefits because of its unreliable transit structure.

fsloth 8y ago
The article suggests a causation, but points out only a correlation without proving it. There are lot of other ways in which French and UK cities are different - there might very well be some other reason why there is a lower 'churn' in UK cities and the lower public transport variable might just be accidentally correlated.
- toyg 8y ago
  Anecdata: UK elites don’t like living in city centres. Anybody worth anything runs from English city centres as soon as they can afford it. If France is anything like Italy, they take the opposite approach. This might compound the public-transport issue to the point of significance, but such a cultural element won’t be eradicated by simply providing more “poor people’s transport”.
  - timomax 8y ago
    That's completely wrong. UK elites love living in city centres. They also love the countryside. They don't live in the suburbs.
    - toyg 8y ago
      >UK elites love living in city centres. That definitely does not tally with my experience in Manchester and Liverpool. Nobody worth any real money lives in the city, they're all in big Cheshire villas. The young professionals might like to play Friends for a bit, but as soon as they spawn or make real money they're off in a blast. I'd be surprised if Birmingham were any different, considering that city centre in practice is almost non-existent. London and Edinburgh are the only places with real elites living in cities, but they are the exception to the rule.

Theodores 8y ago

Birmingham is a motor city. You don't get a bus, you drive. It is as simple as that. The infrastructure was built for cars and the leafy suburbs have plenty of parking. People drive in and don't get the bus. I use the term 'people' to refer to people with proper jobs, if you work in the NHS as a nurse or if you do cleaning, work in a shop or anything else serving customers then you are waiting an extremely long time for a bus and having quite a walk at the other end. Things may have changed recently but from what I remember you had absolutely silly waiting times after 6.30 p.m. Stay at your desk one minute past 5.30 and you have that thirty minutes of walking and waiting before your bus comes along if you are lucky. There are other factors such as the cost of living in the city. Although not London prices, if you want to 'get on the housing rope-ladder' then you are going to be off the bus route and driving in. People do like their cars in Birmingham, for religious reasons a lot of young men don't drink. This leads to a lot of them taking a lot of pride in their motors to therefore never take the bus. There is a large pedestrianised area in the centre however there are also roads that are as big as motorways going through the city. Things like the exhibition centres and other things alluding to Birmingham's status as second city were very much built with the car in mind. I cycled when I lived there and my experiences of the bus was gained after I got run over by a car from the other carriageway collecting me on his bonnet. The bike didn't take it too well so the bleak misery of the bus was not my choice. The waiting was definitely bad for productivity. There was one other cyclist at that workplace of sixty or so other people and only the receptionist got the bus, starting at 6.30 a.m. from Lichfield to be there before 9. Everyone else drove. I did have reason to drive there once, it was on work business and I made the mistake of taking the wrong exit from 5-ways roundabout. A mile later stuck in the slowest traffic ever in Halesowen I was ready to abandon the car and set light to it. Luckily it wasn't my car so I spent the best part of an hour trying to get back to the right exit of the roundabout. That was not 'productive'.

mabbo 8y ago
I think you have cause and effect backwards. Car culture stems from poor planning, from the car being needed to survive. Add in options for not needing a car and the culture will change.
- 8y ago

lordnacho 8y ago

Interesting read, but I have some issues with it. What's the rationale for not including capitals? Why are they on a different population/productivity scale from 2nd cities? Also I'm not sure I believe the lines. As in, they seem a bit sensitive to me. If Lyon wasn't there the France line would be much flatter. And there's plenty of deviation from either line, there must be significant other factors involved. However I've spent some time in Birmingham and other 2nd cities, and there's something to be said about the argument presented. Particularly in Birmingham, the area is more like a bunch of loosely connected suburbs. Not a lot of tall buildings, lots of separate houses, by the looks of it. A fair few big box store malls. Loads of buses, not much else. You're better off in a car, which presents similar problems.

tazjin 8y ago
> What's the rationale for not including capitals? London's infrastructure is not really comparable to other cities in the UK, so it skews the image for the point that the authors are trying to make.
- toyg 8y ago
  And the same goes for Paris in France.

barrkel 8y ago

This smells a lot like using correlation to hypothesize causation. You could tell a different story about richer cities being able to afford better public transport. Subjectively, most UK cities feel less dense than many continental cities, with less apartment living and more urban streets with two story terraced houses. Could tell a similar story about that. UK laissez-faire local government combined with tribal politics making the ruling party incentivized to starve those local governments of funding - especially transfer funding when Tories are in power and Tory local government is usually restricted to rich areas not needing transfer funding - more material for storytelling. IMO the UK political culture is toxic, education is particularly poor. Everything is centered on London and yet all the elite live outside in the green belt, while crime driven by inequality is rising and police numbers are continually cut, and legal aid is also being cut, leading to mistrials and slow cases due to self representation, and free movement is attacked by all sides. I'm looking for the exit. This place is sick. The next domino will be something even more extreme, and it's chance whether it's left or right extremism.

0815test 8y ago
Crime driven by inequality? It's very plausibly driven by poverty, poor educational system and extreme social marginalisation (i.e. lack of good social capital), but these are not the same thing as "inequality".
- sprafa 8y ago
  I don’t see a huge difference. Social marginalisation is indeed huge here in Britain.
- tux1968 8y ago
  I couldn't find a paper with a quick google, but i did hear in a recent podcast that it is exactly income inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) rather than absolute poverty that is the biggest predictor in criminality. Here is a clip that mentions it; if I can find a paper to reference i'll edit this comment when I get home: https://podverse.fm/clips/BJE2hv7gZ https://podverse.fm/clips/BJE2hv7gZ Edit: The connection was made specifically with violent crimes. Here is an article about it that has links to some research papers: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/does-inequality-cause-crime/381748/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/does-in...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Anglena 8y ago

Nice and your information is very good & helpful thanks for sharing. Visit this site plz any software are available with keys <a href="http://licensekeys.co/"> http://licensekeys.co/"> license key </a>

richardcrossley 8y ago

If the headway between buses is greater than 15 minutes, then few people are going to chose it as their transportation option. If one bus fails to show, often enough for me not to bother and walk instead, then you have a 30 minute waiting time at an open bus stop in cold driving rain. Now I live in Asia and the buses are extremely frequent headway is less than 10 minutes, and I have no need for a car.

falcor84 8y ago
>Now I live in Asia and the buses are extremely frequent ... Where in Asia? Being home to over half the world's population, it's extremely diverse and my impression is that the average Asian person had much worse access to public transport than the average UK resident.
- akgerber 8y ago
  The plurality of Asians live in China which has built dozens of metros with thousands of miles of track in recent years: http://www.thatsmags.com/shenzhen/post/19044/china-s-breakneck-metro-system-growth-in-one-gif http://www.thatsmags.com/shenzhen/post/19044/china-s-breakne...
  - robjan 8y ago
    Yes, if you add China, the Four Tigers and Japan then you are already covering 1.6bn people. All of these countries/regions have fantastic public transport in the urban areas.
akgerber 8y ago
"Frequency is freedom" is a slogan that bus consultant Jarrett Walker likes: https://humantransit.org/2011/12/how-frequent-is-freedom.html https://humantransit.org/2011/12/how-frequent-is-freedom.htm...

smcl 8y ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this article. I agree overall that UK public transport is generally pretty bad - it gets even worse when you're travelling inter-city and it's poor value for money. But I feel a little bit like this is nicely presented data and a compelling narrative being used to come to a pre-determined conclusion. When the case for Transport=>Productivity is introduced they talk about the GDP vs Population graph in France and indeed start presenting a neat little example that tells the story they want: > For example, Lyon, the second largest city in France, is more productive than Marseille, the third largest city, which is in turn more productive than Lille. Nice and easy, right? However that was a very interesting choice of city to stop at, because the next largest city - Toulouse - has a higher per-capita GDP than both Marseille and Lille. Then the fifth largest - Bordeaux - is higher than Lille and is mere a whisker shy of Marseille. Only after we skip over a number of tightly bunched cities do we see a bit of a cliff where St Etienne, Toulon and Montpellier are smaller and also relatively poorer. You can definitely see something if you squint your eyes and look at the graph, but to me it just looks like the French cities are more equal overall than the British ones. But we know that already if we compare GINI coefficients of the countries as a whole (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...). Most interesting is the massive outlier in the main graph - Edinburgh. It has no metro system to speak of (save for a single expensive and much maligned tram line) and an OK-but-nothing-special bus network. It's certainly not a sprawling city, but it's not compact either. The poorer British cities definitely need some love and investment, and improved public transport will undoubtedly be needed. But this article presents an oversimplification that makes me a little uneasy about accepting any of their conclusions.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
m-i-l 8y ago
> Most interesting is the massive outlier in the main graph - Edinburgh. Edinburgh shouldn't really be on a graph of non-capital cities, given it gets a number of economic benefits from being a capital city, e.g. being the centre of the Scottish legal system, seat of the Scottish government, most popular tourist destination in the country (as capital cities often are), etc.

timomax 8y ago

Sounds like bs to me. What about countries with no mass transit?

izacus 8y ago
Which ones would be that?
- timomax 8y ago
  Most of them.
  - izacus 8y ago
    I'd really like to have a list since most developed countries do have mass transit system. Can you provide an actual example?

zone411 8y ago

I think a much more likely explanation for Birmingham's low productivity is that it has the highest share of people with no qualifications (education) in the UK and the gap is becoming wider (https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/train-attract-retain-increasing-birminghams-skilled-workforce/birminghams-skills-profile/ https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/train-attract-retain-...).

jimnotgym 8y ago
I don't think they are mutually exclusive. I had people with cars turning down a job with me because they couldn't face the 7 mile commute on the edge of town, on a motorway, because it could take them more than an hour.

infinity0 8y ago

What about Manchester??

socks 8y ago

Why did they include Edinburgh in the British non-capital cities list? There are four British capital cities - Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London.

baybal2 8y ago

My suggestion for improvement: UK needs more 20M+ people cities, and more density. What about relocating northern cities population to the South and building new cities there?

gok 8y ago

I'm increasingly frustrated by transit-related articles like this that completely overplay the data they have. If you look at the US metro areas with the highest productivity (defined in this article as GDP/capita) [1], they are definitely not the ones with the best or even extant transit. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/248112/per-capita-us-real-gross-domestic-product-gdp-by-metro-area/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/248112/per-capita-us-rea...

closeparen 8y ago
The highest average commute times in the us are under 40 minutes in spite of that [0]. We have enough cars and car infrastructure that only a few % are stuck with buses; their poor performance has little impact on overall journey times. The average is about 25 minutes and it goes up by only a few minutes in especially congested places. (If a 5 minute traffic jam is existentially distressing, wait till you see what waiting for the train is like). https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/650061560/stuck-in-traffic-youre-not-alone-new-data-show-american-commute-times-are-longer https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/650061560/stuck-in-traffic-yo...
DontGiveTwoFlux 8y ago
Most of the top areas actually have really good transit, with the exception of Midland (on the list from west Texas oil money) and maybe Des Moines (I’m unfamiliar with it so I’m making an assumption). San Jose and Sunnyvale have the cal train, linking a 50 mile long area into about an hours worth of travel. Bridgeport and Stamford have the metro north train, enabling commutes of 40 miles for tons of people to New York. Consider what would happen to the South Bay if the Cal Train closed, or to Connecticut if the Metro North shut down. Way fewer workers would be able to to live their, and the populations would shift.

dankohn1 8y ago

Compare to this 30 second time lapse of subway growth in China: https://kottke.org/18/01/the-astounding-growth-of-chinas-subway-system-1990-2020 https://kottke.org/18/01/the-astounding-growth-of-chinas-sub...

Reason077 8y ago

There are many possible factors that explain the UK's productivity gap. But ultimately, productivity is mainly an inverse function of labour cost. In economies with a high supply of labour and thus (relatively) low wages, there is less incentive for businesses to invest in labour-saving plant and technology. Why make the risky investment in automation when you can just hire more workers cheaply? The car wash business illustrates this: where there is a good supply of cheap labour, you'll find "hand" car washes with multiple attendants ready to wash your car by hand at any time. But when labour is more scarce and expensive, washing cars by hand isn't really viable. Businesses will instead invest in automatic car wash equipment - and productivity per unit of labour is therefore higher! In (higher productivity) France, automatic car washes are everywhere. In the (lower productivity) UK, there are an awful lot of hand car washes.

konschubert 8y ago
So, it’s not an inverse function, but rather positively correlated.
- Reason077 8y ago
  Yes, that's what I meant to say. Sorry for the "thinko".

keithpeter 8y ago

Quote from OA "The first journey is a bus from the south of the city, Stirchley to, Birmingham. This 3.5 mile journey takes about 20 minutes between 6am and 7am, and about 40 minutes between 8am and 9am." That would be the school run. To test my hypothesis, I'm going to try to run the results during a school holiday in a bit. Very pleased someone has actually done what I have often thought about (but done nothing about) while standing at the 97 bus stop in the rain early in the morning... getting the data from the departure system. I wonder how I can get my hands on a sample of the data...

thewhitetulip 8y ago

If UK public transportation is poor then Indian public transport doesn't exist (excluding the truly epic Delhi Metro)

esotericn 8y ago

Almost all of the analysis done in this article falls flat on its' face because London has been excluded. The UK effectively doesn't exist outside of the South East from the perspective of most individuals with significant wealth or power (central government included).

sgt101 8y ago

Another factor is the density of England vs France; Birmingham is virtually halfway between London and Manchester, both are a fair bit closer to London than Lyon. London is a huge leech pulling economic activity out of the rest of England, and HS2 will make it worse.

oliwarner 8y ago

Say people selling public transport. To anybody living outside London, hyper-centralisation is the obvious problem. Govt has done little in the past two decades to stop every new HQ making London just that little bit more essential. Whole industries need to pull out and other cities get a crack at fresh, planned-ahead growth. Rebuilding London every few years to deal with the latest calamity isn't practical.