An article in CityLab purports to show “why public transit works better outside the U.S.” However, it never actually demonstrates that public transit does work better in other countries; it merely shows that governments have attempted to make it work better.
Many American visitors to major European cities come away thinking that transit works great in Europe. Travelers can reach most major tourist attractions by taking trains between cities and metros and trams within cities. But they are necessarily constricting themselves to a small slice of life on the continent, and the reality is that Europeans don’t use transit all that much more than Americans do.
The CityLab article by Jonathan English argues that, whereas Levittown and other American postwar suburbs were auto-centric, European governments required that suburbs there be built around rail stations. In other words, where the U.S. government gave people the freedom to live the way they wanted, European politicians felt it was their duty to socially engineer people’s lifestyles.
Back around 1900 or 1910, American developers knew that access to a streetcar or rapid transit line was crucial for the success of their developments. But by 1920, auto ownership had grown so much that transit was no longer important. A developer once told me that he would rather have no transit access to his development because the transit lines brought in vandals and burglars. The notion today that transit stimulates economic development is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy: when new transit lines are built, planners rezone areas around the stations for higher densities and offer subsidies if there is no market demand, so developers build in those areas.
For some reason, English thinks it is important to mention that, in 1960, Switzerland’s auto ownership rate was only one-fourth that of the United States. He neglects to add that, despite all of the emphasis on transit, auto ownership and auto driving exploded in European cities after 1960, whereas transit ridership remained flat. As of 2016, Switzerland had 524 automobiles (including cars and light trucks) per 1,000 residents, about 70 percent of the United States average of 760 autos per 1,000 — well over a quarter. (I calculated the U.S. number from Highway Statistics tables MV-1, which shows cars, and MV-9, which breaks out light trucks, and divided by the Census Bureau’s population estimate for 2016.)
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The greatest indictment against European transit policies can be found in the Panorama of Transport published by the European Union in 2006. As the Antiplanner has previously shown here, this document reveals that Europeans ride buses (including both intercity and urban) about 80 miles more per year than Americans and they ride urban trams and metros (what we call light rail and heavy rail) about 55 miles more per year than Americans. That’s not much especially considering that about three times as many European cities have tram and/or metro lines than American cities.
The big differences between Europe and the U.S. were intercity trains and driving. Europeans rode trains about ten times as many miles per year as Americans — roughly 400 vs. 40. But the difference is small compared to the fact that the average American travels nearly 8,000 more passenger miles by auto than the average European. Transit advocates say that European cities are so well designed that they don’t need to travel as much, but it’s hard to imagine that design alone can reduce travel needs by two thirds. It is more likely that Europe’s high fuel taxes have heavily suppressed total intercity travel.
Despite the huge difference in the amount of driving, Europeans still drive for 75 percent of their travel, compared with 85 percent in the United States. If urban bus travel is the same proportion of total bus travel as it is for rail travel, then urban transit provides about 3 percent of passenger transportation in Europe, compared with 1 percent in the U.S. Yes, that’s more, but the difference is mainly due to the suppression of auto travel, not the increase in transit travel.
The problem comes down to the transit industry’s usual focus on inputs rather than outputs. Transit agencies want American taxpayers to increase their budgets and prestige by subsidizing more inputs in the form of transit infrastructure even if it doesn’t result in more outputs in the form of travel riders or overall mobility. Transit advocates such as English have fallen for this argument when they should be looking at what works and what doesn’t work for transportation users.
“European politicians felt it was their duty to socially engineer people’s lifestyles.”
In fairness, Anymore than US politicians felt to socially engineer people towards auto use…How many highways are named after old politicians? The effect felt by transit utilization in Europe is visual. Their systems are in far better shape both distinctively and aesthetically. For several times the subsidies and investment they got a larger chunk of people out of their cars. The fact that transit systems in Europe aren’t dilapidated looking really adds “Broken Windows” argument about people will congregate towards something that appears in excellent condition. The broken windows theory is a criminological theory that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. So the opposite of that makes it therefore seem attractive.
LazyReader—” they got a larger chunk of people out of their cars”
ME–You say that as if were a good thing – why?
Cars cost a fraction of what transit costs.
Cars are more convenient than transit.
Cars are faster than transit.
Cars use less energy (and thus emit less CO2 for those who fell for Al Gore’s climate scam).
Cars expose you to less crime than transit.
What is the social good of transit?
Well it is “social engineering”, even a guy like Bernie Sanders is anti-rail. Not just passenger, but freight too.
Government policy is anti-rail, roads are not expected to be profitable to survive :$
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/photos/lamoille-valley-rail-trail
The Antiplanner wrote:
Many American visitors to major European cities come away thinking that transit works great in Europe. Travelers can reach most major tourist attractions by taking trains between cities and metros and trams within cities. But they are necessarily constricting themselves to a small slice of life on the continent, and the reality is that Europeans don’t use transit all that much more than Americans do.
There’s plenty of suburban sprawl to be found in Europe. Heck, no less than Harry Potter’s home with his (non-magical) relatives was on the fictional Privet Drive in sprawling Surrey County, southeast of London.
The CityLab article by Jonathan English argues that, whereas Levittown and other American postwar suburbs were auto-centric, European governments required that suburbs there be built around rail stations. In other words, where the U.S. government gave people the freedom to live the way they wanted, European politicians felt it was their duty to socially engineer people’s lifestyles.
I would prefer to live in a Levittown (we have one here in Maryland that’s generally known as Bowie, though it was built by Levitt and Sons using similar models of homes as the Levittowns of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) as opposed to (supposedly) transit-oriented suburban garden apartment and high-rise complexes that appear to have been inspired by East German and Soviet Russian ideology about how to house their citizenry in various parts of Europe.
Examples include the notorious Rinkeby, a suburb northwest of Stockholm, Sweden; Rosengård near downtown Malmö, Sweden; Mjølnerparken outside Copenhagen, Denmark; Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris, France; and an assortment of public housing complexes in England. These are places that tourists from the United States usually never see and know nothing about, even as they tout “clean and efficient” rail transit systems in Letters to the Editor of their hometown newspapers and blogs.
The primary input that the transit industry ignores is wealth. The cost of personal travel compared to income is much lower. Every serious scholar knows that GDP per capita strongly correlated with vehicle miles travelled.
We have yet another piece written by an urbanized that ignores this fundamental reality. It’s like someone masquerading as a physicist who refuses to acknowledge gravity.
The US got more money, way more.
The US got more money, way more.
This. Europe (and Canada and Australia and New Zealand) are poorer. Way poorer.
“It is more likely that Europe’s high fuel taxes have heavily suppressed total intercity travel.”
I haven’t read other posts, but are high fuel taxes a bad thing? I would think that from an economics perspective, high fuel taxes would be a somewhat economically efficient way to fund road building and maintenance and to make people pay something of a penalty for the pollution of burning gasoline or diesel (and no, I am not talking about greenhouse gases, but actual toxic emissions which directly cause harm to other people’s bodies). Congestion pricing and tolls would be a better way to pay for roads (by making those who use them most and during the time in which space on the roads is most scarce pay for that road), but fuel taxes seem like a good second best. Also, Europe’s construction costs for all kinds of infrastructure is way lower than in the US, so a rail or subway line in Europe costs something like a tenth or a quarter of what it does in say, NYC.