While seven out of ten persons living in FUAs can reach public transport within a short walk, car dependency is still the norm in many OECD FUAs – and especially in commuting areas
More and better public transport can make cities more inclusive and resilient (ITF, 2019; OECD, 2016). Public transport makes opportunities accessible to everyone, including those who cannot afford private vehicles, people with disabilities, the elderly and the young. Together with walking and cycling, public transport is a low-carbon transport option that can help reduce air pollution in cities. Although electric cars can help reduce pollution, public transport is also more cost-effective in terms of maintenance and expansion compared to road networks and it offers a more inclusive transport solution across age and income groups.
Across OECD countries, 71% of people in midsize and large FUAs can reach a public transport stop within a short walk (10 minutes) (Figure 4.11). In 12 European and Asian‑Pacific countries (including Australia, Germany, Korea, Türkiye and the United Kingdom), almost everybody (90%) can. However, less than half of people in Mexico and the United States have such access. The difference in public transport access within a country can be large, 16 p.p. on average. In the United States, where this difference is biggest (above 50 p.p.), in some FUAs, less than 20% of people can access public transport within a short walk (Figure 4.15 and Figure 4.16).
Apart from how easy it is to get to public transport, its quality also affects how much people use it. One way of measuring quality is by looking at how many people can be reached within a 30-minute journey compared to how many people can be reached by car without any traffic simultaneously (the “transport performance ratio”). On average, in OECD FUAs, people using public transport can access about a quarter of the people they could by car in perfect conditions (Figure 4.12). Users can access half or more in the countries with the best public transport quality, including Denmark, Korea and Switzerland. The quality of transportation tends to vary more from one area to another within a country rather than being consistent across the whole country: on average, the difference in quality between the best and worst FUA within the same country is around 23 p.p. Belgium, Germany, Korea and the United Kingdom have the largest differences with over 50 p.p.
The access and quality of public transport differ a lot between urban centres and suburbs. In OECD FUAs’ urban centres, 84% of the population can reach public transport in a 10-minute walk. This share in suburbs (excluding its rural areas) drops to 56% (Figure 4.13). In Latin and North American FUAs, the difference in public transport access within a short walk between centres and suburbs is above 40 p.p., much higher than that of less than 15 p.p. observed in Asian and European FUAs. Moreover, in most OECD FUAs, public transport users can reach a much larger share of people, relative to the same traffic-free car journey, in urban centres than in commuting zones, with an average gap of 18 p.p. across OECD FUAs (Figure 4.14). The quality of public transport in suburbs versus urban centres can differ more within one country than across similar FUAs in different countries, highlighting differences in land use policies and transport investments at the local level.
