Why Transit Cities are Better for Everyone

I have seen debates throughout my life about Transit cities and car cities and so I really thought I should do a video where I compare two cities and explain why I think Transit is not just a nice to have but a critical part of any great City and how cities centered around cars are worse for everyone not just those using Transit now I could go into great depth about all the ways cities which have better Transit are also typically better in a handful of other ways from having less air pollution to having a healthier populist who spends more of their time walking and less of it sitting to having better land use and more interesting neighborhoods spurred on by transit but this video is going to focus strictly on Mobility because I think come on it's really hard to make the argument that cars are better for the environment or better from a land use perspective but are they better for actually getting around cities so let's see how two famous cities Stack Up Hong Kong and Houston when deciding to compare Hong Kong and Houston the starting point for me was that both cities have a similar population of around 7 million res and both are honestly wealthy cities so you can't claim a lack of money as an excuse for Worse Mobility infrastructure now I like Hong Kong and Houston because if you like Transit it's hard to argue that Hong Kong isn't an example of a great transit system and well if you like cars and highways Houston has a lot of that both cities also have a major airport and are near the coast but Hong Kong really has it much harder because it spread across a number of archipelagos and mountains which makes building any kind of linear infrastructure especially large Transportation infrastructure really expensive and really difficult despite this the extent of the transportation systems in both cities is impressive both cities do have rail systems but Hong Kong has nearly doubled the stations and the rail in Hong Kong looks like this well in Houston it looks like this and looks can be deceiving beyond the point that Hong Kong's MTR system operates with 100 separation from pedestrian and road traffic it also has much larger trains and operates every few minutes system-wide meanwhile all in Houston the best frequency on the rail system is every six minutes which would be considered pretty lackluster in Hong Kong and during the weekends it goes down to every 12th but it's not just the MTR or Metro System Hong Kong has far more the city actually has two other light rail systems the MTR Light Rail and the Hong Kong Island tramways with the cool double decker trams as it turns out both of these Light Rail systems have more stops than Houston's entire light rail system now neither Network covers all citizens and both cities do have their Transit dead zones though it's mostly rail dead zones in the case of Hong Kong but the difference in number of people using Transit is truly incredible in Houston roughly 60 000 people use the light rail every day pre-covet and nearly 200 000 use the transit Network as a whole but in Hong Kong the MTR alone moved nearly 5 million people a day pre-covet that's nearly 100 times as many and as I said before public transportation and Hong Kong isn't just the MTR Metro System there are also the Light Rail systems numerous private bus operators and minibuses as well as ferries those bus operators by the way move almost as many people every single day as the MTR itself basically Hong Kong is a place where public transportation is incredibly popular and Incredibly successful which isn't surprising given the direct integration between development and Transit and also just the really convenient and frequent service which make the system a joy to use so this must mean drivers are second-class citizens in Hong Kong right surely by not focusing nearly as much on public transportation Houston has created an unparalleled Driving Experience I actually have just the test for this okay it's not scientific but I do think it makes some interesting points about the transportation landscape in both of these cities so without further Ado let's introduce the RM Transit City Center airport travel differential the point of this test is to compare how long it takes to go from the city center to the airport in both cities at 8 8 30 a.m on a weekday IEP Crush hour the airports in both cities are major hubs and major employers and so they should get very good Transportation treatment and interestingly the comparison is even better because in both Hong Kong and Houston the airport is roughly a 35 kilometer drive from the city's Center first let's look at Transit and both cases will start near but not quite at a central rail station this means to get to the airport in Hong Kong you have to walk eight minutes to Hong Kong station before jumping on the airport express which will take you about 25 minutes to get to the airport giving you a door-to-door trip time from the city center to the airport in Hong Kong of around 32 minutes now in Houston the transit option isn't as bad as you might expect given this system's ridership getting you from downtown to the airport is about an hour all things considered but it is a bus and it's a winding route and it only operates every 30 minutes so if you don't time it right you're going to be waiting much longer by comparison the trains in Hong Kong run every 15 minutes and that's post covet now I can hear the comment being written already the Hong Kong airport express is a premium service for tourists and business people and you're not entirely wrong the Hong Kong airport express is pricey but it's consistent and fast so it does have that going for it the good thing to mention is that Hong Kong also has buses and they're not just any buses they're excellent double decker Highway buses and taking those buses is not only much cheaper than the airport express it also offers awesome views of the city from the expressway in from the airport and it's only a few minutes slower than the train and the airport buses to Hong Kong airport from the city center are still more frequent than Houston's City Center Airport bus and they go to all kinds of different points in the city it's also worth considering that Transit doesn't run overnight in Houston I don't actually think it has any night buses at all which is kind of crazy for a city with millions and millions of people in Hong Kong by comparison there are convenient buses all night long and they still run quite frequently and that's important because airports tend to be staffed by thousands of people who often work very odd shift hours and so if they don't have transportation options at night via transit they might have to drive now the point here isn't to dunk on Houston's Transit people fighting for better transit in Houston are obviously fighting an uphill battle given how established car travel is in the city and their efforts to provide better or more convenient service where it exists are commendable the point I'm trying to make here is showing you what can be possible in a city of a similar size to Houston so much excellent Transit now let's look at driving remember these are probably going to be less precise travel times than Transit because driving is inherently less reliable given traffic and other variability but there should be a roughly accurate estimation now in Houston driving is the way to get around it so you might imagine that means it's free for everyone right well unfortunately not Beyond paying for your car parking insurance and fuel more electricity if you happen to have an EV you'll also have to pay quite a lot of road tolls now depending on whether you want to pay a toll or not going from the city center to the airport is quite a bit different in Houston taking the toll route runs from roughly half an hour to 40 minutes during Peak periods at least when I was checking that's not too dissimilar from taking the train or bus in Hong Kong but if you want to take the less expensive non-told route it seems less consistent and it's slower 40 to 55 minutes and that's not even that much better than the bust which is pretty impressive good work with the bus Houston now you might imagine that because taking transit to the airport in Houston is worse than driving the reverse would be true in Hong Kong driving to the airport is probably much much worse than taking Transit right the thing is that's just not true despite being a Transit City going from the city center of Hong Kong to the airport takes about the same time if you drive as if you take the bus probably because you're mostly taking the same roadways in fact driving from the city center of Hong Kong to the airport which requires going over a number of bridges through tunnels Islands mountains it's a complicated geography driving in Hong Kong is basically just as fast as driving in Houston and similarly fast to taking Transit and this is a priority destination the point here is that having great transit in Hong Kong gives people options you can still drive to the airport if you want and it's fine but you also have the ability to choose to take a train that's probably still less expensive and just as fast or take a bus you have tons of different Choice in Houston you either have to take these slow half hourly bus drive in inconsistent traffic or pay an underpaid gig worker to drive you themselves for a high price now Hong Kong does enable this by having highways like most major cities in the world but there's a big distinction between highways and places like Tokyo and Hong Kong versus Houston for one in the big Asian cities there are almost always pretty significant Highway tolls but there are also a lot less Lanes many major expressways in East Asia have only two or three lanes compared to four or five or more being common in Houston what's interesting about this is that a wider highway just really isn't all that much faster as long as drivers are staying to the right when they're not passing two lanes is basically just as good from a driver's perspective as four or five or six and of course a wider highway is also uglier more difficult to build and maintain and more polluting so by having narrower expressways these Asian cities can get most of the benefits of Highways and places like Houston without a lot of the drawbacks and that's also because integrated sound barriers and tunnels are a lot more common in Asia than they are in North America you might try to mention that the Dynamics for Transit are similar when you add capacity it's not like the trains go any faster but the reality is that your trips will be faster when you add more capacity on Transit since adding capacity usually means running the trains or buses more often and what that means is you cut down on wait times so higher capacity Transit quite literally is faster Transit and when you need to really expand your capacity for Transit it usually doesn't come in the form of making it wider and uglier it comes in the form of building an entirely new line that not only serves existing demand but can also connect to new destinations and provide for a more reliable Network it's also worth mentioning that in Hong Kong for Intercity travel you don't just have the option of flying Hong Kong is also connected to the mainland Chinese high speed rail network whereas in Houston this is the main rail station and it only has served a few days a week otherwise if you're trying to go to a nearby major city your best bet is probably going to be either to drive or to fly which just isn't great and obviously is not great for the environment there's also the reliability of the transportation networks that you need to take into account the MTR rail network has an over 99 on time rate meanwhile every single time I looked at Central areas of Houston's Highway Network during Peak periods there was severe congestion delays and other problems so so much for the freedom of driving right it's just clear that by building more and more highways and Lanes you don't get a faster and more reliable transportation Network and Houston has clearly tried that approach now of course it would be unfair to suggest that Hong Kong's Road network is impervious to delays and traffic the benefit is that if there's a particularly bad traffic day whether that be because of some strange event or bad weather or something else you can just take the MTR the system is big enough that it has the capacity to absorb some drivers and if you get injured or your car breaks down you don't have to deal with renting a car or paying for a taxi again you can just take the MTR that already exists meanwhile in Houston if you can't drive the transit system doesn't provide a great alternative for a ton of different trips now somebody might mention that Hong Kong benefits from less sprawl and better land use but that's kind of the point Houston's Transportation infrastructure is far more dispersed and less high capacity than Hong Kongs and so sprawl is just sort of built into the equation you need to build a lot of parallel roadways to have enough capacity to move most people when most people are driving and at the same time Hong Kong is also a pretty sprawly Place actually just with clusters of density rather than low density suburban sprawl and what this means is that between areas of sprawl and Urban Development Hong Kong has much more beautiful green natural spaces when compared to Houston this is sort of an amazing Catch-22 about sprawl some people argue that it means more space and more green space to enjoy nature with your family but the reality is that there's nothing natural about the monocultured mowed lawns of suburban sprawl whereas the truly natural places that can be left untouched if you have high density development clustered around Transportation hubs is far nicer and since it's so often near public transportation it's also actually accessible to people who don't own a house and don't have a giant backyard if there's a particular Park you really want to visit you can take the MTR to the other side of the city fairly easily and inexpensively whereas in Houston it's not exactly like you can go to the nicest neighborhood in the city and just start walking through people's backyards so what I hope you can see is that a Transit city is powerful because it gives people options in Hong Kong arguably the ideal mass transit City you can still drive if you choose to and honestly driving doesn't seem all that much worse than Houston despite the fact that in Hong Kong you also also have other options and in Hong Kong the various Transportation Systems actually compete with one another this is much more of a healthy free market competition model of transportation and it's actually sort of ironic that Houston which is in Texas the Bastion of low government interference and free markets actually has very little of that when it comes to transportation in Houston arguably the ideal Car City you have the choice to drive which isn't cheap isn't always fast and isn't all that reliable and for a lot of trips that's the only choice you have at least you can listen to music while you sit alone in your car delayed by traffic it's a monopoly of driving and it's not just worse for Transit users it scores for everyone and that's why I love a city like Hong Kong [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 128,049

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, hong kong, houston

Id: j4s9WDDRE2A

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022