In four cities studied, driving is faster than transit
Transit takes 1.4 to 2.6 times as long as driving, and wins on about 1 percent of land in Stockholm and Amsterdam.
Noahpinion · The American suburbs are better than you thinkDriving is faster than public transit in the four cities studied.
Researchers behind a 2020 study called “Disparities in travel times between car and transit: Spatiotemporal patterns in cities,” by Liao and colleagues, estimated typical trip times from real travel data for cars and public transit in Sao Paulo, Sydney, Stockholm, and Amsterdam, counting parking time for drivers. They found that riding transit takes on average 1.4 to 2.6 times as long as driving.
That pattern held in Stockholm and Amsterdam, places built to be transit friendly. For trips shorter than 3 kilometers the gap is smaller, then it increases rapidly and levels off at about two times for longer trips. The share of land where transit is faster is very small, about 1.1 percent in Stockholm and about 1.2 percent in Amsterdam, rising slightly during peak hours.
The explanation offered is simple: cars go straight from origin to destination, while transit follows a fixed route with stops.
Questions people ask
Does faster mean cars are better than transit?
No. Cars cost more and require a lot more land to move the same number of people. Driving also offers more privacy but forces attention on the road, while transit lets riders read or play games but can mean crowded trains.
Does the result hold during rush hour?
Yes. The researchers compared performance by time of day as well as by distance. During peak hours, the share of land where transit beats driving rises only slightly, to about 1.2 percent in both Stockholm and Amsterdam.
Why study those four cities?
The four cities were chosen to span different continents, layouts, and transit systems. The striking finding was how similar the time gap was across them, which suggests the car speed advantage is not limited to car-built North America.