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Last week the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, announced a number of initiatives designed to support drivers. The slogan is "slamming the brakes on anti-motorist measures" and you can find more information about it, over here.
Naturally this is sparking the usual debate about driving vs. all the other forms of mobility. But it also seems to be part of some sort of broader political strategy intended to distance his party from things like environmental sustainability, net zero targets, and 15-minute city design.
If you're looking for a way to process the above announcement, this recent FT article by John Burn-Murdoch is an excellent place to start. Firstly, the UK (outside of London) is generally poorly served by public transport. This is an important thing to know. By the below measure -- percentage of large cities that have trams, a metro, or urban light rail -- it is even worse than the US:
In fact, one way to think about and measure mobility in the UK is to think in terms of the following geographic categories: there's US cities, European cities (including London), and then there's the rest of the UK. In the case of US cities, they have very clearly optimized around road infrastructure. Meaning, the vast majority of people don't take transit to work, but the area (km2) you can cover by car (in 30 mins) is high.
Look at Houston and Dallas on the left side of this graph:
On the other hand, European cities (again, including London) have optimized in the opposite direction. A lot more people walk, cycle, and take transit to work. In the case of cities like London, Paris, Barcelona, Bilbao, Prague, and others, the number is greater than 60%! However, they're sucky places to drive, as I learned this past summer. The area you can cover by car within 30 mins, is relatively low (bottom right of the above graph).
The challenge for British cities (excluding London), is that they seem to be right in the middle (burgundy dots above). Poor public transport (low percentage of trips to work). And poor road infrastructure (limited area accessible by car within 30 mins). So it is perhaps no surprise that Sunak is honing in on this issue. London is not representative of Britain. And based on the above data, the majority of people living in British cities are almost certainly mobility frustrated.
Of course, to correct this issue you have two options. You can move toward the left (in the above chart) and optimize for road infrastructure. Or you can move to the right and optimize for public transport and other forms of mobility. Based on last week's announcement, Sunak has chosen the left.
Charts: FT
I haven't seen this sort of data before and it's an interesting way of looking at job access, transit connectivity, and overall built form:
Electric scooters are an unsanctioned form of mobility here in Toronto, mostly because people think they're dangerous, but also because I think people are worried about them cluttering up our sidewalks.
The problem with this position is that electric scooters are also a lot of fun to ride and people seem to find them useful. The last time I rode one was in Paris and it seemed perfectly safe to me, though it may have been because there were two of us on it and we were kind of overloading the thing.
In any event, lots of cities either have them or are piloting them. Seattle just finished year one of its pilot program and here's what they learned:
From September 2020 to October 2021, Seattle saw 1.4 million trips taken by over 260,000 riders
Electric scooter ridership greatly exceeded that of public bicycles, with 300,000 scooter trips taken in September alone, compared to about 35,000 bike trips
54% of surveyed scooter riders said that they would have taken a taxi or driven their personal vehicle had a scooter not been available
21% of riders said that they used it to connect to public transit (helping to solve that pesky last-mile problem)
17 collisions involving a scooter and a car were reported during the pilot year (though, for what it's worth, some/many of the incidents involved a scooter that was privately owned and not part of the actual pilot program)
As much as I love riding a bike, it's a bit more of a commitment compared to riding an e-scooter, which is why I think the numbers look the way that they do here. Not everybody wants to bring a change of clothes and shower at the office.
So I think it's really too bad that Toronto just shut these down before exploring ways to make them both safe and useful.
Last week the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, announced a number of initiatives designed to support drivers. The slogan is "slamming the brakes on anti-motorist measures" and you can find more information about it, over here.
Naturally this is sparking the usual debate about driving vs. all the other forms of mobility. But it also seems to be part of some sort of broader political strategy intended to distance his party from things like environmental sustainability, net zero targets, and 15-minute city design.
If you're looking for a way to process the above announcement, this recent FT article by John Burn-Murdoch is an excellent place to start. Firstly, the UK (outside of London) is generally poorly served by public transport. This is an important thing to know. By the below measure -- percentage of large cities that have trams, a metro, or urban light rail -- it is even worse than the US:
In fact, one way to think about and measure mobility in the UK is to think in terms of the following geographic categories: there's US cities, European cities (including London), and then there's the rest of the UK. In the case of US cities, they have very clearly optimized around road infrastructure. Meaning, the vast majority of people don't take transit to work, but the area (km2) you can cover by car (in 30 mins) is high.
Look at Houston and Dallas on the left side of this graph:
On the other hand, European cities (again, including London) have optimized in the opposite direction. A lot more people walk, cycle, and take transit to work. In the case of cities like London, Paris, Barcelona, Bilbao, Prague, and others, the number is greater than 60%! However, they're sucky places to drive, as I learned this past summer. The area you can cover by car within 30 mins, is relatively low (bottom right of the above graph).
The challenge for British cities (excluding London), is that they seem to be right in the middle (burgundy dots above). Poor public transport (low percentage of trips to work). And poor road infrastructure (limited area accessible by car within 30 mins). So it is perhaps no surprise that Sunak is honing in on this issue. London is not representative of Britain. And based on the above data, the majority of people living in British cities are almost certainly mobility frustrated.
Of course, to correct this issue you have two options. You can move toward the left (in the above chart) and optimize for road infrastructure. Or you can move to the right and optimize for public transport and other forms of mobility. Based on last week's announcement, Sunak has chosen the left.
Charts: FT
I haven't seen this sort of data before and it's an interesting way of looking at job access, transit connectivity, and overall built form:
Electric scooters are an unsanctioned form of mobility here in Toronto, mostly because people think they're dangerous, but also because I think people are worried about them cluttering up our sidewalks.
The problem with this position is that electric scooters are also a lot of fun to ride and people seem to find them useful. The last time I rode one was in Paris and it seemed perfectly safe to me, though it may have been because there were two of us on it and we were kind of overloading the thing.
In any event, lots of cities either have them or are piloting them. Seattle just finished year one of its pilot program and here's what they learned:
From September 2020 to October 2021, Seattle saw 1.4 million trips taken by over 260,000 riders
Electric scooter ridership greatly exceeded that of public bicycles, with 300,000 scooter trips taken in September alone, compared to about 35,000 bike trips
54% of surveyed scooter riders said that they would have taken a taxi or driven their personal vehicle had a scooter not been available
21% of riders said that they used it to connect to public transit (helping to solve that pesky last-mile problem)
17 collisions involving a scooter and a car were reported during the pilot year (though, for what it's worth, some/many of the incidents involved a scooter that was privately owned and not part of the actual pilot program)
As much as I love riding a bike, it's a bit more of a commitment compared to riding an e-scooter, which is why I think the numbers look the way that they do here. Not everybody wants to bring a change of clothes and shower at the office.
So I think it's really too bad that Toronto just shut these down before exploring ways to make them both safe and useful.
The above is a table from New Geography (using data from the University of Minnesota). And what it shows is how many more jobs, across the US, can be accessed within a 30-minute commute by car versus by transit. For example, what this data tells us is that, on average across the US, there are about 56x more jobs that can be quickly accessed by car versus by transit.
But there is also huge variation across the 50 largest cities in the US. On the top end is Detroit, where there about 130x more jobs that can be accessed by car (again within 30 minutes). This isn't at all surprising. Also not surprising is the fact that New York is on the lowest end with only 5.6x as many car-versus-transit jobs. This is one of the reasons why I spoke yesterday about NYC being such an ideal candidate for something like NYC 25x25.
What a lower number tells us is that the city is far less reliant on personal vehicles and almost certainly has a higher urban density. That's why you see cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago near the top of this list. And in my opinion, this is where you want to be. The goal should be to minimize this multiple.
I haven't seen a dataset like this before, but I'm now curious to see how it varies globally. It feels like something that more of us should be monitoring. Because we know that there are strong links between jobs access and the overall economic performance of a city.
The above is a table from New Geography (using data from the University of Minnesota). And what it shows is how many more jobs, across the US, can be accessed within a 30-minute commute by car versus by transit. For example, what this data tells us is that, on average across the US, there are about 56x more jobs that can be quickly accessed by car versus by transit.
But there is also huge variation across the 50 largest cities in the US. On the top end is Detroit, where there about 130x more jobs that can be accessed by car (again within 30 minutes). This isn't at all surprising. Also not surprising is the fact that New York is on the lowest end with only 5.6x as many car-versus-transit jobs. This is one of the reasons why I spoke yesterday about NYC being such an ideal candidate for something like NYC 25x25.
What a lower number tells us is that the city is far less reliant on personal vehicles and almost certainly has a higher urban density. That's why you see cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago near the top of this list. And in my opinion, this is where you want to be. The goal should be to minimize this multiple.
I haven't seen a dataset like this before, but I'm now curious to see how it varies globally. It feels like something that more of us should be monitoring. Because we know that there are strong links between jobs access and the overall economic performance of a city.
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