02How the transport systems of big British cities measure up to their European counterparts

Transport within cities matters to the national economy because urban mobility determines not just the speed of commuting, but also the number of workers who can access high-demand locations, especially city centres. Larger concentrations of people in urban areas should unlock economies of scale known as ‘agglomeration effects’ that better match workers to firms and achieve greater levels of specialisation and productivity.

Big British cities are less productive than their Western European peers

Big cities in the UK have lower productivity than their population would suggest, as Figure 1 illustrates. While large German and French cities are more productive, only in London is there a strong relationship between the size of a UK city and its productivity levels.³

If the UK’s largest cities underperform in terms of transport connectivity, their ‘effective size’ (see Box 2) will be smaller than their total population would suggest. Also, because those cities cannot connect as many people, it reduces the benefits they offer as a place for business investment, impacting their economic performance.

Public transport accessibility in British cities is worse than in European cities

In principle, almost everyone living in a large British city could drive to the centre within 30 minutes (see Figure 2).⁴ While some Western European cities are also very accessible to residents living further out, especially those in the Rhine-Ruhr, road transport doesn’t appear to be a particularly limiting factor in the productivity performance of big British cities. ⁵

But serving a city centre by private transport alone is impractical – there isn’t enough road space, which limits the number of jobs that can be created there.⁶ Given the preference for high-skilled service businesses to be located in city centres, the performance of the public transport network is crucial to the economic performance of the city.⁷

Yet fewer people in big British cities can get into the centre within 30 minutes by public transport than their European counterparts (see Figure 3) – on average, it’s 40 per cent versus 67 per cent. This is also true when looking at a 45-minute threshold (see Appendix 2).⁸ As Figure 3 shows, this is the case for every large British city except Glasgow.

This means that the labour markets of big British cities outside London are not as large as their populations would suggest. They have a smaller effective size as measured by the number of people who can reach the city centre by public transport compared with similar European cities.⁹ In reality, they don’t offer the business benefits they would be expected to.

There are two reasons why this may be the case. The first is a supply-side problem; British cities may have less public transport infrastructure than their European counterparts, resulting in a smaller network that is harder for residents to reach. This is what the debate on regional inequalities tends to focus on.

The second reason is a demand-side issue that is given much less air time – the built-form of British cities. As they are of a lower density than European cities, it is harder to scale public transport services and people are forced to live further away from existing infrastructure.

The following two sections look at the evidence available on each potential factor.

The area that public transport covers in big British cities is not universally worse than in European cities

Networks in large British cities do not necessarily cover less ground in 30 minutes than those on the continent. As Figure 4 shows, five of the nine big cities outside London have public transport systems of a similar size to their European peers. In fact, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Newcastle have networks that cover a larger physical area from which residents can still access the city centre in 30 minutes (Figure 5 compares the coverage in Birmingham and Lyon).¹⁰ In contrast, public transport systems in Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield allow a much smaller area to access their city centres in 30 minutes, despite the Metrolink and Supertram in the latter two.

British cities have poor public transport accessibility because they are not as dense as European cities

In large British cities, fewer people live in neighbourhoods that can easily access the city centre by public transport than in their Western European counterparts.¹¹ Figure 6 shows that as European cities get larger, the areas that fall within 30 minutes of the city centre by public transport become denser. This is not the case for UK’s largest cities, with the exception of London, which is still less dense than Paris.

As a city becomes bigger, connectivity and congestion issues are likely to increase. In response to this, densifying larger cities allows people to share land more efficiently, which in turn supports demand for public transport in terms of capacity, frequency, and infrastructure, especially to city centre locations.¹² But the UK’s biggest cities have fewer people living in well-connected areas closer to the city centre, reducing potential demand for public transport. Cities like Birmingham should be substantially denser than Liverpool, just like Lyon is denser than Toulouse or Nantes.

Spatially, the impact of British cities’ built form can be seen in Figure 7. Despite the public transport networks of Manchester and Milan covering a similar area within 30 minutes, far more people can access Milan’s city centre in that time.

In practical terms, mid-rise apartment living is much more common in European cities than Britain’s predominantly low-rise, terraced and semi-detached urban form (see Figure 8). Transport systems need users, but the built form of Britain’s big cities prevents people from living near stations where they can easily access these networks.

This is not necessarily down to different preferences in Britain, it is also an unintended result of the discretionary planning system. Its case-by-case decision-making process concentrates new homes at high densities in certain pockets on the outskirts, or in centres, of cities and prevents new development in suburban neighbourhoods, including around stations.¹³ In approximately 50 per cent of suburban neighbourhoods in England and Wales, fewer than one home was constructed every year between 2011 and 2020, and in 20 per cent none were built. ¹⁴

In addition, the English phenomenon of train stations in the green belt also reduces public transport accessibility. Stations such as Whitlocks End in Birmingham have rapid city centre connections, but there are few houses within accessible walking distance. At Pilning station in Bristol, which is on the Bristol-Cardiff rail line, a lack of residents means it cannot reach its full potential (see Figure 9). By only allowing a few people to live within walking distance of climate-friendly commuting to city centres from green belt stations, English big cities make poor use of the public transport infrastructure they already have, even though they could provide more than two million homes at suburban densities.¹⁵

Public policy should invest in public transport infrastructure. But the UK’s big cities cannot reach European levels of public transport accessibility by just expanding their public transport systems, as described in the case study below. They need to change their built form too.

Lower accessibility inhibits public transport use

Poor accessibility can affect how frequently public transport networks in big British cities are used. As Figure 13 illustrates, British cities (circles) tend to be less accessible and accommodate less commuting by public transport than European cities (triangles). While factors such as ticket price will undoubtedly impact ridership, improving accessibility is the way to increase it.