7 ms·

This is a well-known principle of urban transport. If driving is faster than the alternative transport mode (whether that's public transport, if any, or walking

This is a well-known principle of urban transport. If driving is faster than the alternative transport mode (whether that's public transport, if any, or walking), then at the margins people will switch to driving, but that means more traffic on the road, more congestion, and slower driving speeds. Conversely, if driving is slower than the alternative, then at the margins people will switch away from driving, reducing traffic and increasing driving speeds. So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode. In central London, for example, travel speed has been roughly the same whether you drive or take the Underground, for more than a century. Update since some commenters seem to be having trouble: this process depends on the travellers "at the margin", that is, the people who are most willing to switch modes to reduce their journey time. Thinking in terms of the average or typical traveller is misleading.

agumonkey 7y ago
jevons paradox ?
neaanopri 7y ago
This doesn't mean driving is useless. Cars are generally air conditioned, and have a greater capacity to carry luggage than walking. ...so cars should this be _slower_ than cars, given these benefits
- dannyw 7y ago
  On the other hand, there’s no need to find and pay for parking, and you can be drunk and take public transport.
  - Shivetya 7y ago
    we are discussing uber here, parking is not generally a consideration here. as pointed out, the reason that cars being shown to be slower than walking in many cases is moot because cars provide benefits which more than offset. 1. Weather protection 2. Cargo transportation 3. Ease of movement for the disabled 4. Additional safety for those toting along small children 5. Some level of protection/isolation from others The argument in favor of bicycling in lieu of cars falls prey to the same reasons. There are pro and cons so we must always fairly assess them before standing up and declaring one method worse than another. In fact none ever are all the time
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zulln 7y ago
  Driving cost more and then you have the parking problem. There are ups and downs to both alternatives.
- pergadad 7y ago
  The average commuter won't carry huge luggage around. But they might spend the time reading or working out they are sitting in a train/metro compartment. And they exercise when using the bicycle, meaning they will be healthier and have reduced health issues and cost. Bicycles are also much less costly and environmentally friendly, don't pollute, are less likely to have accidents (except with cars), ... But infrastructure is much cheaper and easier to maintain then that for cars. Cars on the other hand block the roads not just for each other, but also for public transport, trucks, emergency vehicles, ... They produce co2 and microparticles, take up valuable space when parked, etc. Overall cars have huge externalities. So no, cars are not the best means of transport just because you can carry lots of stuff which you usually don't carry...
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Have you ever lived outside San Francisco or Portland? Here in DC, during the summer (which lasts six months out of the year), the heat and humidity will have people sweating with even mild exertion. So to the speed of walking or biking, you have to also account for the time to take a shower at either end. The CO2 and microparticles are definitely a problem. One which can be addressed by banning non-electric cars downtown.
    - liotier 7y ago
      > you have to also account for the time to take a shower at either end No need to shower: I just change _all_ of my clothes when I arrive... Cycling clothes on me, business clothes and dress shoes in a semi-rigid pouch in my panniers. Takes five minutes at each end and the total time is still half of what car or public transportation would take !
      - vonmoltke 7y ago
        I guess that depends on how much if a sweat you work up. Personally, if I work up enough whereby I need to change my clothes at he end I am going to feel disgusting if I don't also shower.
- megablast 7y ago
  Cars also have the huge advantage of killing 40,000 every year in the USA. Yeah, go cars.
- graeme 7y ago
  You’re putting your preferences on others. Some people will drive for these benefits. Others prefer fresh air and exercise. Others prefer reading. A set of people will gravitate to each option. But as OP said, it is people at the margin who help equalize times.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Also, there's an assumption that the car is going from someplace in the city to some other place in the city. It almost certainly will not be faster to bike from a suburb 20 miles out of the city into the city than it would be to drive.
  - Skunkleton 7y ago
    That isn't always true. I commute from a downtown to an office park in a suburb (against traffic when driving). On my bike, it takes about 40 mins (~11-12 miles). The same commute in reverse by car is about 45 mins due to traffic. If I instead lived in the suburb and worked downtown, it would be a tossup travel time wise between my bike and car.
petra 7y ago
// So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode. Doesn't this mean, that the real "battle" between the public transportation and cars, should be based on a better experience ? And since driving a car in traffic, everyday, is a negative experience and will stay so until autonomous driving - in theory, we could create the right public experience, that will win over most drivers ? And so, why haven't we done that ?
- rayiner 7y ago
  Because it would cost too much. About 90% of commutes are driving, versus 5% for transit (mostly buses). But even though transit accounts for only about 5% or commutes, it accounts for 25% of spending at the federal, state, and local levels (combined): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2015/02/24/funding-challenges-in-highway-and-transit-a-federal-state-local-analysis https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/.... The majority of people, quite reasonably, will not pony up even more money for transit until it can actually improve their commutes. And it can’t, for two different reasons. First, it costs us five time as much money to build a unit of rail as it does say Paris (a city where the majority of people don’t drive to work). That kneecaps your ability to increase coverage of the transit network—making it a viable choice for the majority of commuters. Paris has a dense network of subways and commuter stations, which means that people can take a reasonable walk to a transit station. You can’t build a dense network like that if each mile of track costs you five times as much. Second, our cities don’t look anything like the cities where most people take transit to work. People are catching on to measuring population density of metro regions in weighted terms (calculating the density in a way that shows the density in the places where most people live, rather than using arbitrary administrative lines). Under those measures, places like Paris and Barcelona have metro are densities of 30,000-50,000 people per square mile. Only New York City comes close. San Francisco and LA are at 12,000. DC, Seattle, Portland, etc. are in the 5,000-6,000 range. Taking both figures together kills you. When you build 10 miles of subway in Barcelona, you might cover 250,000 people (assuming you get people walking from 0.25 miles on either side). And say it costs you $1 billion. In DC that same 10 miles of subway covers 30,000 people. And it costs you $5 billion. Oh, there is really a third reason. Because you have to drive everywhere anyway, our job centers in the US are widely dispersed. Google’s main Paris office is in Paris itself. Google’s main Bay Area office is in the suburbs of San Francisco. Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC. Fixed transit networks are awful for such layouts.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
I'm not sure this is true in Copenhagen, although I've only visited once and I don't have any data to back me up. There is a huge cycling culture there and it seemed that the bike lanes were often pretty badly jammed up while the car lanes were relatively clear. But perhaps this is more a result of it being impractical to own a car there (eg parking) as opposed to the cost or convenience of operating one. It would seem to be an outlier so it would be interesting to see some data.
- anonymou2 7y ago
  That was the whole point of bike lanes, get cyclists off the roads and leave these exclusively for motorists. So It seems it has worked pretty well. Generations of cyclists fooled by this, it's so sad.
- liotier 7y ago
  Why do those cyclists stay on the bicycle lane when it is clogged and other lanes are clear ? Here in Paris, I can't imagine anyone behaving in such submissive manner
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    I admit it's a stereotype but the German's are certainly more inclined to follow the rules than the average. Certainly when compared to the French. Edit: Excuse the stupidity. I read Cologne in my head.
    - untog 7y ago
      Perhaps, but Copenhagen isn't in Germany
    - liotier 7y ago
      > more inclined to follow the rules Cycling lanes exist for the cyclist's convenience but there are no rule that make them mandatory
      - 7y ago
gerbilly 7y ago
This is called induced 'demand'¹, and it is why I love biking in downtown. I like to play a game where I pick a distinctive car 3 blocks ahead, and see if I can catch up to it and pass it. If the car does not turn off the road, I almost always do, and by a wide margin. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
- asdff 7y ago
  I love filtering through traffic on my bike. My favorite hobby while passing cars trapped in traffic is counting how many aren't solo drivers in a given stretch of traffic, excluding work trucks/delivery. Usually it's under 10%. It's fun to imagine how this would look if all these people were on a bike, but 20' x 6' apart like they are currently arranged in these singly occupied cars. Bonkers.
  - kurthr 7y ago
    I like your example... I've done the same, but it's important to remember that lots of those trapped people came from far away places on freeways that may not have access to a train... certainly that's true of the delivery trucks, which also couldn't deliver on a bicycle. The key really is to move the marginal traffic that can switch. The key thing I see reducing cars is the absence of parking. Being at your destination, but unable to park (within a few blocks) is often enough to convince people not to drive.
- baxtr 7y ago
  I changed jobs recently and one of the biggest factors for me was being able to bike to work. 6km a trip mostly through parks circumventing traffic as much as I can. It’s an important life quality factor for me.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I wonder what percentage of the population could be considered at the margins, as it were - in my city cars very very quickly outpace alternative modes for transportation. I'm lucky to be in a position where transport is the same time as driving, and walking is just the right distance to be enjoyable, but that's incredibly rare.
n4r9 7y ago
The data from the article is surprising even after taking this into account, since public transport is generally a lot faster than walking. However, I suspect that people who are driving will normally start and/or finish well outside central London thus making the journey worth it. I had a play around with some travel times in London on google maps (using the look-ahead function by one day): Shortish journey (Waterloo to St Pancras) - Drive: 12-35 mins - Walk: 46 mins - PT: 27 mins Longish journey (Wimbledon to Arsenal) - Drive: 50-120 mins - Walk: 4hrs - PT: 56 mins
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  Yeah, but you must also consider that there’s literally nowhere to park you car in St Pancras or Waterloo, and consider the fact that central London is incredibly prone to congestion which gives the driving less predictability.
  - n4r9 7y ago
    Right, which makes the data even more surprising! I know I'm reluctant to make a journey by car through central London even if Google maps tells me it's going to be fast.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  I think London and New York will be among the few places this bears out. In Seattle many of my trips double, triple, or even quadruple in time if I try to take public transit. EG driving to the Amazon locker for a pickup takes 10 minutes, or 45 minutes by bus. The bus time is for travel time only, and doesn't include time spent waiting. And trying to get to my SO's house by bus takes a 15 minute trip up to about an hour and a half of walking and transferring.
  - JAlexoid 7y ago
    That's not the case. There are more dense places with good public transport than just NYC and London. (We shall exclude all of American cities from any consideration, because even in NYC the public transport is pretty bad)
Balgair 7y ago
> In central London, for example, travel speed has been roughly the same whether you drive or take the Underground, for more than a century. Demonstrated humorously by Top Gear here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_POxZSkaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_POxZSkaU
lutorm 7y ago
What ends up being "faster" doesn't just depend on travel speed though. It also depends on startup costs. The startup cost for biking can be higher than a car (if you need to carry the bike out from your apartment) but also the other way (if you need to walk to your parked car and then walk from wherever you find parking to where you're going). People might also be willing to trade some extra time for less exertion, but this depends heavily on the terrain.

agumonkey 7y ago

jevons paradox ?

neaanopri 7y ago

This doesn't mean driving is useless. Cars are generally air conditioned, and have a greater capacity to carry luggage than walking. ...so cars should this be _slower_ than cars, given these benefits

dannyw 7y ago
On the other hand, there’s no need to find and pay for parking, and you can be drunk and take public transport.
- Shivetya 7y ago
  we are discussing uber here, parking is not generally a consideration here. as pointed out, the reason that cars being shown to be slower than walking in many cases is moot because cars provide benefits which more than offset. 1. Weather protection 2. Cargo transportation 3. Ease of movement for the disabled 4. Additional safety for those toting along small children 5. Some level of protection/isolation from others The argument in favor of bicycling in lieu of cars falls prey to the same reasons. There are pro and cons so we must always fairly assess them before standing up and declaring one method worse than another. In fact none ever are all the time
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zulln 7y ago
Driving cost more and then you have the parking problem. There are ups and downs to both alternatives.
pergadad 7y ago
The average commuter won't carry huge luggage around. But they might spend the time reading or working out they are sitting in a train/metro compartment. And they exercise when using the bicycle, meaning they will be healthier and have reduced health issues and cost. Bicycles are also much less costly and environmentally friendly, don't pollute, are less likely to have accidents (except with cars), ... But infrastructure is much cheaper and easier to maintain then that for cars. Cars on the other hand block the roads not just for each other, but also for public transport, trucks, emergency vehicles, ... They produce co2 and microparticles, take up valuable space when parked, etc. Overall cars have huge externalities. So no, cars are not the best means of transport just because you can carry lots of stuff which you usually don't carry...
- rayiner 7y ago
  Have you ever lived outside San Francisco or Portland? Here in DC, during the summer (which lasts six months out of the year), the heat and humidity will have people sweating with even mild exertion. So to the speed of walking or biking, you have to also account for the time to take a shower at either end. The CO2 and microparticles are definitely a problem. One which can be addressed by banning non-electric cars downtown.
  - liotier 7y ago
    > you have to also account for the time to take a shower at either end No need to shower: I just change _all_ of my clothes when I arrive... Cycling clothes on me, business clothes and dress shoes in a semi-rigid pouch in my panniers. Takes five minutes at each end and the total time is still half of what car or public transportation would take !
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      I guess that depends on how much if a sweat you work up. Personally, if I work up enough whereby I need to change my clothes at he end I am going to feel disgusting if I don't also shower.
megablast 7y ago
Cars also have the huge advantage of killing 40,000 every year in the USA. Yeah, go cars.
graeme 7y ago
You’re putting your preferences on others. Some people will drive for these benefits. Others prefer fresh air and exercise. Others prefer reading. A set of people will gravitate to each option. But as OP said, it is people at the margin who help equalize times.
jandrese 7y ago
Also, there's an assumption that the car is going from someplace in the city to some other place in the city. It almost certainly will not be faster to bike from a suburb 20 miles out of the city into the city than it would be to drive.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  That isn't always true. I commute from a downtown to an office park in a suburb (against traffic when driving). On my bike, it takes about 40 mins (~11-12 miles). The same commute in reverse by car is about 45 mins due to traffic. If I instead lived in the suburb and worked downtown, it would be a tossup travel time wise between my bike and car.

petra 7y ago

// So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode. Doesn't this mean, that the real "battle" between the public transportation and cars, should be based on a better experience ? And since driving a car in traffic, everyday, is a negative experience and will stay so until autonomous driving - in theory, we could create the right public experience, that will win over most drivers ? And so, why haven't we done that ?

rayiner 7y ago
Because it would cost too much. About 90% of commutes are driving, versus 5% for transit (mostly buses). But even though transit accounts for only about 5% or commutes, it accounts for 25% of spending at the federal, state, and local levels (combined): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2015/02/24/funding-challenges-in-highway-and-transit-a-federal-state-local-analysis https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/.... The majority of people, quite reasonably, will not pony up even more money for transit until it can actually improve their commutes. And it can’t, for two different reasons. First, it costs us five time as much money to build a unit of rail as it does say Paris (a city where the majority of people don’t drive to work). That kneecaps your ability to increase coverage of the transit network—making it a viable choice for the majority of commuters. Paris has a dense network of subways and commuter stations, which means that people can take a reasonable walk to a transit station. You can’t build a dense network like that if each mile of track costs you five times as much. Second, our cities don’t look anything like the cities where most people take transit to work. People are catching on to measuring population density of metro regions in weighted terms (calculating the density in a way that shows the density in the places where most people live, rather than using arbitrary administrative lines). Under those measures, places like Paris and Barcelona have metro are densities of 30,000-50,000 people per square mile. Only New York City comes close. San Francisco and LA are at 12,000. DC, Seattle, Portland, etc. are in the 5,000-6,000 range. Taking both figures together kills you. When you build 10 miles of subway in Barcelona, you might cover 250,000 people (assuming you get people walking from 0.25 miles on either side). And say it costs you $1 billion. In DC that same 10 miles of subway covers 30,000 people. And it costs you $5 billion. Oh, there is really a third reason. Because you have to drive everywhere anyway, our job centers in the US are widely dispersed. Google’s main Paris office is in Paris itself. Google’s main Bay Area office is in the suburbs of San Francisco. Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC. Fixed transit networks are awful for such layouts.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago

I'm not sure this is true in Copenhagen, although I've only visited once and I don't have any data to back me up. There is a huge cycling culture there and it seemed that the bike lanes were often pretty badly jammed up while the car lanes were relatively clear. But perhaps this is more a result of it being impractical to own a car there (eg parking) as opposed to the cost or convenience of operating one. It would seem to be an outlier so it would be interesting to see some data.

anonymou2 7y ago
That was the whole point of bike lanes, get cyclists off the roads and leave these exclusively for motorists. So It seems it has worked pretty well. Generations of cyclists fooled by this, it's so sad.
liotier 7y ago
Why do those cyclists stay on the bicycle lane when it is clogged and other lanes are clear ? Here in Paris, I can't imagine anyone behaving in such submissive manner
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  I admit it's a stereotype but the German's are certainly more inclined to follow the rules than the average. Certainly when compared to the French. Edit: Excuse the stupidity. I read Cologne in my head.
  - untog 7y ago
    Perhaps, but Copenhagen isn't in Germany
  - liotier 7y ago
    > more inclined to follow the rules Cycling lanes exist for the cyclist's convenience but there are no rule that make them mandatory
    - 7y ago

gerbilly 7y ago

This is called induced 'demand'¹, and it is why I love biking in downtown. I like to play a game where I pick a distinctive car 3 blocks ahead, and see if I can catch up to it and pass it. If the car does not turn off the road, I almost always do, and by a wide margin. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

asdff 7y ago
I love filtering through traffic on my bike. My favorite hobby while passing cars trapped in traffic is counting how many aren't solo drivers in a given stretch of traffic, excluding work trucks/delivery. Usually it's under 10%. It's fun to imagine how this would look if all these people were on a bike, but 20' x 6' apart like they are currently arranged in these singly occupied cars. Bonkers.
- kurthr 7y ago
  I like your example... I've done the same, but it's important to remember that lots of those trapped people came from far away places on freeways that may not have access to a train... certainly that's true of the delivery trucks, which also couldn't deliver on a bicycle. The key really is to move the marginal traffic that can switch. The key thing I see reducing cars is the absence of parking. Being at your destination, but unable to park (within a few blocks) is often enough to convince people not to drive.
baxtr 7y ago
I changed jobs recently and one of the biggest factors for me was being able to bike to work. 6km a trip mostly through parks circumventing traffic as much as I can. It’s an important life quality factor for me.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

I wonder what percentage of the population could be considered at the margins, as it were - in my city cars very very quickly outpace alternative modes for transportation. I'm lucky to be in a position where transport is the same time as driving, and walking is just the right distance to be enjoyable, but that's incredibly rare.

n4r9 7y ago

The data from the article is surprising even after taking this into account, since public transport is generally a lot faster than walking. However, I suspect that people who are driving will normally start and/or finish well outside central London thus making the journey worth it. I had a play around with some travel times in London on google maps (using the look-ahead function by one day): Shortish journey (Waterloo to St Pancras) - Drive: 12-35 mins - Walk: 46 mins - PT: 27 mins Longish journey (Wimbledon to Arsenal) - Drive: 50-120 mins - Walk: 4hrs - PT: 56 mins

heavenlyblue 7y ago
Yeah, but you must also consider that there’s literally nowhere to park you car in St Pancras or Waterloo, and consider the fact that central London is incredibly prone to congestion which gives the driving less predictability.
- n4r9 7y ago
  Right, which makes the data even more surprising! I know I'm reluctant to make a journey by car through central London even if Google maps tells me it's going to be fast.
jschwartzi 7y ago
I think London and New York will be among the few places this bears out. In Seattle many of my trips double, triple, or even quadruple in time if I try to take public transit. EG driving to the Amazon locker for a pickup takes 10 minutes, or 45 minutes by bus. The bus time is for travel time only, and doesn't include time spent waiting. And trying to get to my SO's house by bus takes a 15 minute trip up to about an hour and a half of walking and transferring.
- JAlexoid 7y ago
  That's not the case. There are more dense places with good public transport than just NYC and London. (We shall exclude all of American cities from any consideration, because even in NYC the public transport is pretty bad)

Balgair 7y ago

> In central London, for example, travel speed has been roughly the same whether you drive or take the Underground, for more than a century. Demonstrated humorously by Top Gear here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_POxZSkaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_POxZSkaU

lutorm 7y ago

What ends up being "faster" doesn't just depend on travel speed though. It also depends on startup costs. The startup cost for biking can be higher than a car (if you need to carry the bike out from your apartment) but also the other way (if you need to walk to your parked car and then walk from wherever you find parking to where you're going). People might also be willing to trade some extra time for less exertion, but this depends heavily on the terrain.