There have been a number of changes to the London Underground in recent months. September saw the launch of the Northern line expansion, connecting Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms to the Tube network; last week, the same line’s Bank branch was reopened, following upgrade works to boost capacity; and yesterday, Crossrail services finally started running, more than a decade after the project was given the green light.
Recent Centre for Cities research shows that public transport accessibility in the UK’s largest cities outside London is substantially lower than its Western European peers. But how does London’s public transport really perform when put against Paris’s, the only comparable megacity in Western Europe? And how much impact does Crossrail make to that comparison?
Before Crossrail, public transport accessibility was lower in London than in Paris
Centre for Cities estimates using data from TravelTime shows that before Crossrail, it was possible for around 20 per cent of London’s residents to get into the city centre in 30 minutes by public transport, which is significantly below the 41 per cent in Paris (Figure 1). The French capital, which has a similar-sized population, enabled around 2.1 million more residents to get into its centre in 30 minutes by public transport.
A similar pattern is seen when analysing public transport accessibility to their respective financial centres (Canary Wharf and La Défense). Before the opening of the Elizabeth Line, 1.1 million residents could reach Canary Wharf in 30 minutes by public transport (11.3 per cent of London’s population), compared with 2.7 million able to reach La Défense (26.8 per cent of Paris’s population).
Figure 1: Before Crossrail opened, London’s public transport accessibility within 30 minutes was significantly lower than that of Paris
Source: Traveltime; EUROSTAT (2018); ONS. Centre for Cities’ calculations.
Methodology: Areas that can reach the respective centres (City centres: Holborn and Hôtel de Ville; Financial centres: Canary Wharf and La Défense) in 30 minutes between 8:45 and 9:15 on the 18 of May. As population data is available at the square kilometre level (Eurostar), in some situations the population within the public transport areas was rounded up by considering all residents within a square kilometre (if part only part of that area falls within our public transport area).
The gap closes when considering longer commutes. Both cities can connect more than 90 per cent of their residents to their centres within 60 minutes by public transport. However, London still slightly underperformed Paris before Crossrail (see Figure 2 for further details).
Crossrail improves London’s transport network but does not fully close the gap with Paris
Crossrail has certainly had a big impact on longer commutes, as it increases the reach of London’s transport network. With the new line, London is able to connect slightly more residents to its city centre within one hour than Paris.
By providing another Tube link to Canary Wharf, the Elizabeth Line also significantly closes the public accessibility gap between London’s and Paris’s financial centres. Around 83.2 per cent of London’s residents can reach Canary Wharf in 60 minutes, a 4.8 percentage point increase that halves the existing gap between London’s and Paris’ financial centres (Figure 2).
That said, Crossrail has narrowed but not closed much of the gap with Paris for shorter commutes. Centre for Cities estimates show that 465,000 more people can now reach London’s city centre in 30 minutes, but that is still 1.7 million fewer than Paris. Meanwhile, the gap between residents of each city being able to reach their respective financial centres within 30 minutes remains significantly large.
Figure 2: Crossrail helps London close the gap with Paris, especially accessing its financial centre in longer commutes
Source: Traveltime; EUROSTAT (2018); ONS. Centre for Cities’ calculations.
Methodology: Areas that can reach the respective centres (City centres: Holborn and Hôtel de Ville; Financial centres: Canary Wharf and La Défense) in 30 minutes between 8:45 and 9:15 on the 18 of May; Crossrail data from the 24 of May between 8:45 and 9:15. As population data is available at the square kilometre level (Eurostar), in some situations the population within the public transport areas was rounded up by considering all residents within a square kilometre (if part only part of that area falls within our public transport area).
London is not as dense as Paris in its core, which reduces accessibility
A key reason for why Paris continues to outperform London on shorter commutes is not that it has a more extensive public transport network, but rather, it has a much denser urban form with more people already living close to its centre. More than half of Paris’s residents live in areas housing more than 20,000 residents per square kilometre within 30 minutes of the city centre. This is substantially more than just six per cent in London.
Crossrail has expanded the reach of London’s public transport network at the edges but the urban form of the city has not changed. This is particularly important when looking at performance over a 30-minute commute. Running Crossrail through Ealing Broadway or Forest Gate increases the capacity of the network at these stations, giving people more options to travel, but doesn’t increase the number of people who could get into the centre from those places in 30 minutes, simply because the number of people living around those stops has not changed.
Figure 3: London’s population density within its 30-minutes public transport belt, including Crossrail, is substantially lower than Paris
Source: Traveltime; EUROSTAT (2018); ONS. Centre for Cities’ calculations.
Methodology: Areas that can reach the respective centres (City centres: Holborn and Hôtel de Ville; Financial centres: Canary Wharf and La Défense) in 30 minutes between 8:45 and 9:15 on the 18 of May.
London has already improved transport accessibility by building more homes but should do more
Investments like Crossrail and expansion of the Bakerloo line are needed in order to improve public transport accessibility and deal with the network’s congestion but these infrastructure projects need to be implemented in conjunction with building more homes along key routes.
There are already some successful examples of this in London, such as at Tottenham Hale, Canada Water, and around the recent expansion of the Northern Line. More projects are planned too: the over-site projects in Southwark and other stations, where TfL is developing housing on top of existing stations, are encouraging and could further narrow the gap between London and Paris.
Those projects will also help to reduce TfL’s dependence on ticket fares as a source of revenue, putting it more in line with international counterparts, such as Hong Kong, where the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) corporation develops and manages land or the Ørestad Development Corporation, in Copenhagen, which was a joint venture between central and municipal governments that sold land to private developers after expanding the Metro system.
The pandemic has left TfL with a significant funding gap and it may have to think creatively to get back on a stable financial footing – something Centre for Cities will have more to say on in the coming months.
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