I mean, UK public transport is a shambles, but this is not really a very useful metric if it excludes the good old bus.
It’s an idiotic metric.
You can’t just take the number of cities that are served by a local light rail service. It tells you **nothing** about how much such service is effective, and/or ow much it serves as an alternative to driving.
E.g. Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta, and Oklahoma City all have a light rail system. It’s laughably short, has an extremely low usage and it’s nearly useless for anyone who doesn’t live AND work right next to one of the stops, which is a ridiculously low % of the population. Buses also don’t work well due to how the city are structured and how car traffic is regularly prioritised, which leads to buses being perceived as “transit for the poor”. In fact, more than 85% of the population in all of these urban areas commutes by car exclusively.
OTOH, places like Belfast, Southampton or Cardiff don’t have any subway or light rail, but they do have local commuter rail systems or buses that work immensely better than their American counterparts (including, but not only, because British cities are usually much denser and mixed-use zoning is the norm) and carry a lot more passengers. Car modal share is normally below 60%, which is high by Western European standards but would be a positive anomaly in the US.
I feel like 90% of the stuff posted here is just dick measuring.
Change it to 300 000 and you’re left with two cities and 100% in Norway. Statistics 🙂 Stavanger/Sandnes is roughly 250k and the third city in your stat, I believe.
Denmark has exactly one large city. So quite easy to get the 100 percent.
This is bullshit. How can Portugal have a higher number than Poland. The public transport in polish big cities are way better than in Portugal by far. This graph is wrong since the data is not accurate
We did it boys! We are wealthy western country.
Statistics is a lie. Ireland would have 100% and has the worst public transport in Europe.
And in the other train thread, people were downvoting me because I shited the UK because they invented rail but still use buses instead of light transport to connect cities to some airports like in Bristol.
Rail transport in UK are a tragedy, and they should be shamed.
Hmm worse than germoney but better than Italian.
Mild success?
What is considered s big city. If it is for belgium, my hometown of 70k people is considered a big city. Is it viable for such a small city to have a tramline?
Is Denmark only including Copenhagen? Would be a bit unfair imo, its like adding San Marino and putting them on 0…
What a dumbass conclusion from the title/subtitle of the graph. So public transport only counts if it’s rail-based all of a sudden??
Why has the FT been posting all these dodgy, true but completely misleading, statistics recently?
Now that’s one very questionable chart lol. Belgium has literally only 2 cities with more than 250k inhabitants (3 if you count Brussels as one, but it’s actually 19 municipalities). And all of them have tram, metro, *and*/or urban light rail lol. I’m not a mathematician but 3 out of 3 must be something around 100%.
edit: Just saw the OECD part lol… Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Gent, (Liege), (Mons), and (Namur) would be “cities” with over 250k people then. The ones between brackets don’t have local rail services, but both Mons and Namur are so small that you can get anywhere within a 15 minute walk from the train station lol.
Cries in Ireland.
I don’t feel this at all, living in the UK. The bus system feels fine and our cities are so dense you can easily walk.
Sweden should be at 100%, what tiny places are they counting as “large cities” to bring it down?
We barely even have two, Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Wouldn’t electric scooters alleviate the mass transit problem to a degree? I don’t know how a scooter’s footprint compares to a train, but I’m guessing it’s quite good
27 comments
Twitter [thread](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1695034745871032609) with even more graphics
The UK is also worse than many countries that the UK looks down on in “eastern Europe”.
Well Estonia would be 100% too.
I understand why is US so low but why is UK so low?
I suppose it depends on what you call a large city. So Denmark would be Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense and so on
What’s wrong with busses ?
Incorrect for NL. The four cities considered big enough here all have either metro’s, trams or both. So we should be at 100%.
Denmark only has 2 FUAs
[FUA map in Europe](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-functional-urban-areas-FUA-considered-for-the-emission-screening_fig2_361858979)
I mean, UK public transport is a shambles, but this is not really a very useful metric if it excludes the good old bus.
It’s an idiotic metric.
You can’t just take the number of cities that are served by a local light rail service. It tells you **nothing** about how much such service is effective, and/or ow much it serves as an alternative to driving.
E.g. Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta, and Oklahoma City all have a light rail system. It’s laughably short, has an extremely low usage and it’s nearly useless for anyone who doesn’t live AND work right next to one of the stops, which is a ridiculously low % of the population. Buses also don’t work well due to how the city are structured and how car traffic is regularly prioritised, which leads to buses being perceived as “transit for the poor”. In fact, more than 85% of the population in all of these urban areas commutes by car exclusively.
OTOH, places like Belfast, Southampton or Cardiff don’t have any subway or light rail, but they do have local commuter rail systems or buses that work immensely better than their American counterparts (including, but not only, because British cities are usually much denser and mixed-use zoning is the norm) and carry a lot more passengers. Car modal share is normally below 60%, which is high by Western European standards but would be a positive anomaly in the US.
Both cities in Denmark has it https://www.bolius.dk/de-stoerste-byer-i-danmark-27946
I feel like 90% of the stuff posted here is just dick measuring.
Change it to 300 000 and you’re left with two cities and 100% in Norway. Statistics 🙂 Stavanger/Sandnes is roughly 250k and the third city in your stat, I believe.
Denmark has exactly one large city. So quite easy to get the 100 percent.
This is bullshit. How can Portugal have a higher number than Poland. The public transport in polish big cities are way better than in Portugal by far. This graph is wrong since the data is not accurate
We did it boys! We are wealthy western country.
Statistics is a lie. Ireland would have 100% and has the worst public transport in Europe.
And in the other train thread, people were downvoting me because I shited the UK because they invented rail but still use buses instead of light transport to connect cities to some airports like in Bristol.
Rail transport in UK are a tragedy, and they should be shamed.
Hmm worse than germoney but better than Italian.
Mild success?
What is considered s big city. If it is for belgium, my hometown of 70k people is considered a big city. Is it viable for such a small city to have a tramline?
Is Denmark only including Copenhagen? Would be a bit unfair imo, its like adding San Marino and putting them on 0…
What a dumbass conclusion from the title/subtitle of the graph. So public transport only counts if it’s rail-based all of a sudden??
Why has the FT been posting all these dodgy, true but completely misleading, statistics recently?
Now that’s one very questionable chart lol. Belgium has literally only 2 cities with more than 250k inhabitants (3 if you count Brussels as one, but it’s actually 19 municipalities). And all of them have tram, metro, *and*/or urban light rail lol. I’m not a mathematician but 3 out of 3 must be something around 100%.
edit: Just saw the OECD part lol… Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Gent, (Liege), (Mons), and (Namur) would be “cities” with over 250k people then. The ones between brackets don’t have local rail services, but both Mons and Namur are so small that you can get anywhere within a 15 minute walk from the train station lol.
Cries in Ireland.
I don’t feel this at all, living in the UK. The bus system feels fine and our cities are so dense you can easily walk.
Sweden should be at 100%, what tiny places are they counting as “large cities” to bring it down?
We barely even have two, Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Wouldn’t electric scooters alleviate the mass transit problem to a degree? I don’t know how a scooter’s footprint compares to a train, but I’m guessing it’s quite good