Making Buses Better

One probably fair critique of my CityBracket challenge is that I overestimated the value of fixed rail over a good bus system. Bad rail certainly is less helpful than good buses, and honestly good buses are a key component in effective transit across a city regardless of the presence of rail.

However, there are also a lot of bad bus networks out there. Enough that they've given the bus as a whole a bad name.

So how do we make them better?

I have in mind this post in particular: how do we make people want to take transit, just using buses? It's not about making driving harder but about making driving not required.

1. Get Them Out of Traffic

Obviously if you actually got people out of their cars and into the buses, wholesale, that would solve the problem of buses getting stuck in traffic. But until that blessed day, the traffic is an issue.

So get the buses out of it.

This is a classic element of full bus rapid transit design, but it doesn't have to be BRT-branded to work. Seattle had a bus tunnel downtown (before they put rail into it) that did this even though nothing on the route would have been called "rapid" transit. When I was growing up, it definitely made buses a more attractive option downtown, because they were going through their own right of way that didn't have to parallel, duplicate, or even really interact with the right of way of cars.

The less time buses spend stuck in this, the more attractive they get.

Yes, cars also get stuck in traffic (see: all the cars above). But buses are already seen (at least in the US) as something of a tradeoff: I'm giving up being able to go door to door to my destination (unless I live at a bus stop and my destination is another one on the same route) in exchange for something--cost, speed, not having to park, etc. So in a car I could theoretically pull onto another route with less traffic, or at least have my own tunes playing; a bus doesn't have those amenities.

What it can have is a removal from traffic: bus lanes, bus tunnels, bus (and other transit/bike) access that cars can't take, etc. 

2. Speed Up the Routes (Zig Zags and Stop Spacing)

A lot of US cities (like the Quad Cities, for four) have winding bus routes in the name of coverage: the bus route goes less efficiently than the road network does between points, so that they can cover more of the city with service, even if that service is slowed down.

But then people with cars will notice that the service is slower than driving, and not take the service, making the "coverage" only for those who can afford no other option, rather than real coverage for all residents.

This also goes to a certain extent to stop spacing as well: if you have so many bus stops that the bus ends up much, much slower than driving, even direct trips get out-competed.

The 2 in Seattle has pretty good frequency and routing, and it interlocks with the 13, overlaps with the 1, and joins a bunch of buses downtown. All of that allows it to have a more direct route from Queen Anne to downtown without zigzagging through the neighborhood.

This is a good example of how to keep up the coverage with more direct routes. Good transfers, good frequency, and basically just more buses. 

Yes, this is why bus cuts can create a vicious spiral of doom: when you stop funding it, it gets worse, and no one rides it, so it needs more funding, which it doesn't get because no one is riding it.

3. Let Me Actually Catch A Bus

If seeing a bus in the wild feels like a miracle, people not only won't take it, they won't think about taking it.

Lincoln, NE has good bus routes, but this is the only time I've actually found one in the wild to photograph--not a great trend.

The more often you see buses, the more they feel like an option. That's because the more you see them, the more you could actually take them, because they're there. That means frequency, it means coverage, and it means putting them on routes that go where people are (so they see them, but also so you serve those places).

It also means not prioritizing individuals in cars over multiples of people in buses. Go ahead and put that bus stop right at the place people want to go. Give them signal priority. Give them dedicated places to load and unload and not just the side of the road.

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This can be an issue with trams too, as in Toronto where they actually drop off in the middle of the street sometimes.

Put buses, and their infrastructure, like stops and lanes, in people's way so that they see them. And then let them actually ride them (including a functional pay system). Then people might actually take the bus.

Basically, a good bus system is totally possible: but you can't just slap some buses on a theoretical map and call it a day. You have to actually run enough buses, in good enough places, at good enough speeds and frequencies, for people to notice and act on noticing, so that you build up a system.

And then you have to not gut it when the larger government decides they hate your city, or all cities, or the concept of funding transit.

But that's a different concern. Build it, and people will at least ride it, even if you can't get funding later.

Dependability Rules

All of urbanism may not be transit, but some if it still is. And based on a really annoying experience I recently had, I want to talk about one of the key (to me) parts of good transit design: dependability.

By dependability I mean a few different interlocking things that all come down to this: in order to be better than owning and operating one's own car, a transit system needs to help people achieve what they want to achieve, when they want to achieve it, without giving them additional headaches along the way.

1. Resilience

One crucial part of this is resilience: if something goes wrong, either with a transit vehicle, a street, or the whole dang city (think a storm), or in someone's life (missing a bus) it can't shut down the whole system or create an impossible delay.

There are a lot of ways to achieve this: not every system needs to or should look the same. One basic way is frequency: a broken down vehicle or missed bus doesn't destroy someone's day if the next one will be right along.

A lot of metros run on this basic plan (albeit an actual vehicle breakdown can throw things off due to blocked tracks). It's also a central feature of what gets called "turn up and go" transit.

I did not look up the schedule for this Paris tram. It came anyway.

But it can also be achieved by having multiple mode options, for example: if the bus isn't running, a subway can get me there, or a bike lane, or good pedestrian access, or something.

This is why closures on the Amsterdam metro didn't derail my trip there. It wasn't the only way to get where I wanted to go! 

It's also what makes London so great.

What matters is that one problem doesn't cascade through the whole user experience.

2. Point to Point Coverage 

A flexible transit system is also one where I can actually get from point to point in the city: where if I need to run an errand after work and then pick up my kid and then go home all those places are covered by transit, and I can reasonably get between them.

If I can't, I'll probably not take transit.

What does reasonably mean? Well, some of this comes back to frequency (waiting an hour between buses for a 5 minute errand is going to feel unreasonable, especially in heat or snow). Some of it is about speed (see below). And some of it is about the feel of things, vibes if you will: am I always routing through the same hub for each trip so it feels like I've spun my wheels doing each errand, or do I feel like I'm moving from place to place? And yet more is about city design in the first place: a 15-minute city will have an easier time with this than one where every trip is 10 km.

Bikes of course can help with this, if the distances are short enough and the bike paths are plentiful--as here in Amsterdam.

And on a bigger scale, NS does something similar (when it's working) across the Randstad.

3. Speed

Dependability is also about speed, because what feels like a reasonable trip depends on how much longer it takes than other modes. If it takes 11 min to drive somewhere and 48 to take a bus, I might take the bus sometimes, but the odds of taking a car go way up (this is an actual example from my trip to Minneapolis). That goes double if I have to break my journey for some errand or if I have a small child with me.

This is something RER-style service like in Paris is good for, getting across the city fast.

Now, speed and coverage often are in conflict because of cost and basic physics: not everything can run everywhere and stop everywhere and also go fast. But there is a critical balance, one sometimes helped by express services or multiple modes. 

The Elizabeth line is another great example of this--and it also provides redundancy with other elements of the system, as well as good point-to-point coverage for new areas that weren't well served before.

In fact, that may be the key take away here: these all feed into each other. Dependability is about thinking about transit as people's primary option, not just as a backup for those with no option. It means frequent, fast transit that covers the area, so that people have multiple routes and modes to get places when they need to.

And it's not impossible; it just requires political will to spend money. And voters' willingness to see the return on investment over a long haul.

Distinctive Amenities

Thinking again about this Next Metro post, I wanted to talk about what kinds of things can contribute to urban feel beyond transit and housing.

In this post I want to focus on what I'm calling distinctive amenities: things that are normal in one city that might exist in others but aren't typical elsewhere in the same way, giving a sense of place to the city. On a larger scale we might think of separated red bike paths in The Netherlands or free public restrooms in a lot of US cities; but here I'm trying to zoom in on single cities. Again, I'm not claiming these elements are fully restricted to only this city; I'm claiming they are distinctive of that city in how common or normal they are when they might not be so elsewhere.

1. Public Wading Pools in Minneapolis 

This is the amenity that inspired this list: lots and lots of public parks in Minneapolis have little wading pools in them: unstaffed, use at your own risk spaces that allow children (and to a lesser extent adults) to cool off in summer.

Now, we had such a thing in my neighborhood park in Seattle growing up, so it's clearly not unique. But the maintenance and even expansion of the system city-wide feels distinctive, at least among US major cities. It's not something you'd necessarily consider if you were designing Minneapolis from scratch, but it gives the parks, and thus the city, a feel you don't get elsewhere.

An example in Linden Hills Park.

2. Library Hours in Lincoln

This isn't an element of the built environment, but it's nevertheless significant, I suggest, to the urban sense in Lincoln, Nebraska: the public library hours there are longer, especially on Sundays, than in many comparably sized or even larger US cities. My wife still has to catch herself about libraries likely being closed Sundays, for example, or closing early on Sundays, even after decades of living outside the city.

Is it the major feature of Lincoln? Of course not. But that's part of the point. It doesn't require a major building plan or a 30 year city development to create distinctive elements of living in a certain place. And things that make a difference to the urban feel for those living there don't necessarily have to be big or ostentatious.

A related library example not significant enough to get its own listing: the mobile book truck for the Davenport libraries gives out free books all summer in the city parks. That's not something everyone does; it's something every city could do, but actually doing it is different.

3. The Blocks in Barcelona

Barcelona's cityscape is designed around a very particular block structure that cuts the corners of squares to increase visibility and mobility, while retaining the insides of blocks for public space. This is a more famous example than the above, but that's part of the point too: this isn't an unknown thing I wish to try to spring on the world, it's a natural part of how cities evolve. 

These distinctive blocks are both identifiable and well-designed. But they're not actually unique or inimitable. A city could use the design! But they often don't, and so this becomes part of the typical, distinctive Barcelona experience.

What is unique or distinctive about your city? What makes the city itself, and what makes it livable, and pleasant, and even exciting? These are important elements of urbanism above and beyond density, transportation, and other typical elements of the urbanism package.

Making Walking* Rock

The asterisk in the title here is intended to indicate that when I say walking, I don't just mean locomotion on two feet. I mean whatever way someone gets around legally on a sidewalk: walking, rolling in a wheelchair, pushing a stroller, jogging, running, etc.

I mean, in other words, not taking transit but also not taking a personal vehicle or hired car.

And the best way to design cities is to make this experience as good as possible and as usable for as much of life as possible. 

Why? Because every other mode requires this too, at some level. The train or bus stop may be a few blocks from your destination or the parking space you find might be distant and the Uber won't take you inside your destination either. So boosting walking boosts it itself but also all other modes.

So the more we make walking attractive, the better transportation outcomes become. And the converse.

So how do we make it attractive?

1. Pedestrianized Areas: A Beautiful Boon

I want more of these, pretty much always. Cities used to be all pretty much like this, if you go far enough back (ie before the car) because the ironclad division of different road uses was less, well, ironclad before cars showed up.

But also we have a lot more people now, so I'm certainly not advocating all cities be all pedestrianized (even if you include spaces for bikes, or even buses/trams, as some cities do). I'm just saying that this:

in Toronto and this

in Croydon are fundamentally appealing to the senses, especially sight as in the above examples that are pictures, but also sound (less car noises!) and smell (less exhaust!). 

Also they produce a situation where walking can get places and do things other modes can't, which also makes it a more attractive way of getting around.

Note that, like the Croydon example, this can be a temporary market: it doesn't need to be a forever pedestrian zone (though I would suggest that you can do a better job of making a real pedestrian-friendly zone if you commit to the bit).

2. Good Sidewalks Make Good Neighbors 

With apologies to Robert Frost's neighbor, it's not fences but sidewalks that make for a good neighborhood feel. By this I mean that not only functional sidewalks (a must!) but also actual elements of the sidewalk environment that actually make it a pleasant place to exist are beneficial. 

This is a very basic example--not like the world's best sidewalk, but a space that Vancouver has that has a good basic sidewalk. Note the following elements: a clear, flat surface with minimal visible points where someone could trip or a wheelchair would catch; enough space (though barely) for both a line to form outside this one shop and people to still navigate past that line; trees providing cover from sun, protection from the street and its cars, and an aesthetic bonus; space between the trees for a newspaper holder (pink, on the left). 

Negative examples abound, so I won't belabor the point, but here we can see a narrow, obstructed sidewalk in Davenport that doesn't have much going for it. Yes, they're improving it by finally putting in a proper curbcut at the corner, but there's no alternate way to get around it in the meantime and the sidewalk is just kind of...minimally there. 

Note how in Toronto there is also a major piece of construction material (the signboard) on the sidewalk, but there's still enough room to get around it and actually walk somewhere.

I'm not advocating explicitly for a massive overhaul of our streetscape so everything is broad and smooth and beautiful (though that would be a great thing), just for something a little more accessible, beautiful, and pleasant to experience.

3. Consider How Much Street Is Street

That might sound tautological, but consider this from Haarlem:

The pedestrian space itself here is fine but basic, like the Vancouver example above: smooth (note the use of tiles or small squares rather than the typical US giant blocks of cement, which I find makes for a more pleasant sidewalk texture), with space for planters and bike parking, and just enough space to pass people. What's key is that there is only one lane of cars to two sidewalks (you can see the other one on the other side just barely in this photo). The narrow street is not used as an excuse to squeeze the pedestrian space, as it would be in the US. Instead, the pedestrians get their space and the remaining space is given to cars. It ends up squeezing the cars, who are all backed up behind that mail vehicle, but there was a lot more pedestrian throughput than cars could have achieved. 

This is not surprising. Good sidewalks get people moving.

What else could we use street width for other than wider cars and more cars? 

Well, this one in Amsterdam has tram tracks (right) and bike path (left) and bike parking/trees (center)--and very little space for cars at all.

(Lest I be accused of overfluffing the Netherlands, here's a Dutch street with plenty of car parking

...though it's still a good sidewalk)

It's not just the Dutch who do this, anyway. Here's a wide Parisian sidewalk, taking up space that in the US would probably be car-centric:

And here's multimodal space that is both pedestrian-friendly and tram-conveying in Paris:

Let's hop across the Channel to London, which can do this too, by Camden Town:

And not to forget North America, here are a couple examples from Vancouver

And DC, where the sidewalk is wide enough to encompass a bikeshare dock easily:

Basically, if we don't assume that the width of the street belongs to the car alone, we can do amazing things for pedestrians. But when we do, we run into the Karl Jilg illustration of our cities, where there is just a massive void where the cars go.

We can do better, and a great place to start is just making pedestrian spaces more attractive--which often translates most effectively to "larger."

Cars and Bikes Have Different Needs

 While biking around the Quad Cities and considering what is wrong with our streets, I have had a lot of thoughts about how bikes and cars have very different needs from the streetscape. This is probably why more bike-friendly countries don't herd them into the same spaces in the first place. But rather than just say "build it Dutch style" I thought it might be helpful to think about why that separation is valuable in the first place.

1. Bikes Need Smoothness

Bikes (at least commuter and road bikes, not BMX) need smooth surfaces in a way that cars don't. 

This, by the way, is why "bike on the sidewalk" is terrible advice, besides hitting pedestrians, since sidewalks often have these kinds of divides between tiles, and a bike will have to go over each and every one of those bumps.

Or this guy, of course. But also look at those horizontal lines across the sidewalk (I was walking, not biking, here for the record).

It's bad in the road, too. Yes, cars do not like giant potholes, and pothole repair is a major expense for many cities, but there's a very different scale to what kind of thing counts as a problem.

Take this, for instance. The main hole in the middle is a problem for everyone. In fact, I think they may have filled it in since I took this a couple weeks ago. But the longer cut across the road is one that cars don't really care about; their tires are big, their bodies are heavy, and they just roll over it. Bikes bump, and in some cases worse, on streets like these.

Then there's this:

No one likes this when they look at it, but bikes like it less. I have actively lost at least one tire tube and literally rattled part of my bike light off the bike on this street. But I also drive a car over it very frequently, and I barely notice this. Some of that is that the streets in the QC are not wonderful, so this doesn't necessarily stand out, but also the car just doesn't care about it in the same way.

The flip side of this, and the thing that sometimes makes me particularly annoyed as someone on a bike, is that my bike is not actually the one causing these issues. The weight of my bike is literally 1/50 of the weight of my car--and I bike a heavy bike (Aventon Abound) and a relatively light car (2013 Nissan Leaf). Sure, some of pothole creation is from thaw/crack cycles, but vehicle weight is the biggest factor we can control. 

And cars crack roads that bikes have to bike on.

Fun times.

2. Bikes Get Ghettoed

This is part of a broader set of symptoms where the edges of streets, where bikes have to operate, are worse than the centers.

Cracks in the road are the start--look at the wrecked edge of the sidewalk in my photos above. But it goes beyond that. Next time you walk or drive or bike down a street, look at how much detritus from cars is in the gutter or on the edge of the street, and realize that that is the part of the road left for the bikes.

Also, when they do bother to fix a road, they often leave the edges unaffected, so you don't actually get an improvement as a bicyclist.

Water, of course, isn't something cars leave on the road, but it's still concentrated by design in the edges of the road. Good luck biking through that--and enjoy the spray when cars pass you!

See: edges.

3. Bikes Need Less Space

Now, that sharrow above is way too small of a space if you're next to cars. That's a big issue, by the way, in discussing this last point. Bikes do and should have the right to take the whole lane if they need it, next to cars, because cars are so dangerous to be next to.

But if you're not next to cars, bikes need less space. 

A two-way cyclepath can take one lane of car traffic, as here (Vancouver)

Or here (Toronto)

A one-way cyclepath can be less than a lane, as it is here in Boston. 

And if you just completely separate them from cars, you can just use a smaller space, as they do on this bridge in Amsterdam.

The basic point is that where cars have to take as much space as will make them vaguely safer than they naturally are, a bike can take up substantially less space due to weight, size, speed, maneuverability, and vision. So a bike lane that  isn't part of a street lane can just adapt to that, and one that is protected (as some of the above examples are) can do so better than an unprotected lane or a lack of a bike lane entirely.

And that's not even mentioning parking.

That forest of bikes is probably 5 or 6 parking spaces for cars. Maybe less for US SUVs.

Basically, bikes are in fact a different kind of vehicle than cars, and have fundamentally different needs--needs that are in some cases literally not compatible with the way cars affect streets and street design. 

Build bike lanes. Separate bikes from cars. And suddenly bikes become a much more viable solution for everyone.

CityBracket: Lessons and Carols

So now that I've written up 15 CityBracket 2025 matchups, what have I learned? What can I (or, if I'm feeling bold, we) take away from this process and from thinking about these cities in this way?

I've organized these around the theme of "Lessons and Carols," ala a Christmas Eve service: one lesson paired with something lighter--in this case, a photo I didn't get to use to illustrate something in the series. And as is traditional at least at my wife's church, we'll be doing 7 of them.

Lesson 1: Consider Scope

Let's start with a lesson about how I did CityBracket itself. While I am glad to have chosen cities that I had such a close personal connection to (not to mention many photos of!), and it was helpful for me to think through the various places I've been and lived, that still produced some major issues with the bracket itself. Limiting to US cities might have been a good start, given that the two pairings of non-US cities produced the two finalists. Or, alternatively, expanding to have more international cities (Montreal, Paris, Amsterdam, to name three that I have particular thoughts about) might have helped with the scope of the bracket, and the sense that some of the matchups were a bit unfair to those involved.

Related to that: to me, the biggest "what ifs" of this bracket are the two losing international cities, both of which went out in round 1 and both of which gave their eventual finalist national brethren a relatively close contest. Where would Oxford have ended up if it had started in a group with Louisville or Milwaukee, rather than wiping out against big brother London? After all, it got as many points against London as Vancouver did in the final, and outdid both Baltimore and Boston. Likewise, how far could Toronto have gone against most American competition, instead of Vancouver in round 1? The groupings make sense to me, based on my personal experiences of the cities, but they did produce some quick exits for some major contenders. Maybe seeding would have helped?

Carol 1:

There really wasn't any reason to provide this picture of street art in Croydon, but I really like it, and it speaks to an element of Lesson 2, as well.

Lesson 2: Culture Matters

This is a lesson I'm deriving largely from Reece Martin's excellent Next Metro blog: urbanism goes beyond transit. While I continue to believe (given my experiences, especially here in the Quad Cities) that transit is the pumping lifeblood of cities, it's undeniable that it's not the only thing that contributes to urban feel and urbanist living--and this bracket was likely over-reliant on it. The "amenities" category ended up stretching too far, to include cultural and other quality of life elements, which weren't my original intention but were so important they ended up taking over anyway. A future version of this contest should include more explicit emphasis on those non-transit (and non-housing) elements of urbanism.

Carol 2:

There wasn't really an opportunity to consider the physical design of transit vehicles, so this accordion fold in the articulated buses in Seattle didn't come to play--hence Lesson 3

Lesson 3: Transit Isn't Just About Schedules

Obviously a key element of urban transit is where it goes, how it gets there, and how frequently. But you can't actually evaluate the entirety of a public transit system, much less a city's urbanism, on schedules, or on where and by what mode its transit moves people. Details of the transit beyond that can matter too: like whether the buses, trams, trains, etc. are kept up, or adequate to the services they run. Does your light metro go in a tunnel? Or do you run a particularly unique or meaningfully iconic service? Or, as above, are the articulated trolleybuses a familiar and beloved part of the transit network? These matter to how we understand city transit and city urban design.

Relatedly, I may have emphasized rail over bus too heavily in this bracket. Now, I am actually a believer in bus-based systems; Seattle when I was living there didn't have Link, so all the commutes I describe in my own experience were via bus, and a solid bus system (with good scheduling and routes) can do pretty much everything a city needs. But that may not have fully come through in my analysis here. Some of that is because my practical experience suggests that buses don't actually provide an equal level of service even if they could in theory -- but not all of it, and I could do better.

Carol 3:

One of my favorite places in Seattle to walk by (on the recreational path from which I took this photo) and therefore a good reminder for Lesson 4.

Lesson 4: I Love These Cities

Yes, even the ones that didn't do well. One of the biggest benefits for me (and I hope for you) of this series was the chance to tap into that love and see the best that each city had to offer in terms of urbanism, even if (like say Louisville or Rochester) it wasn't ever going to go far in the competition. The frame was helpful for me in terms of thinking through the good parts of each city--an important exercise for anyone living in a city that isn't magically going to become London overnight.

Every city has its areas or its elements that are attractive for urbanist living, and while the giant sprawling metropolis of London may have won, that doesn't mean you have to be London to do things right. I enjoy visiting and revisiting all of these cities, and I had a good time living in each of them. The Pokemon Go summer found me in Rochester; it may not have great transit or walkability, but it still had enough to make that summer special.

Carol 4:

I really wish I could have fully explained why I love the Seattle Public Library main branch so much, but there wasn't time or space, which leads us to Lesson 5.

Lesson 5: It's Hard to Explain the Mundane

One thing I struggled with in writing up these descriptions was the extent to which my love for these cities comes through things that may seem ordinary or mundane, or at least not particularly exciting. The above Seattle landmark is a good example--the libraries in almost all the cities are places I love visiting, but they don't necessarily differentiate each city from the other, and when they do it's not always easy to explain how or why. The Dewey Decimal Spiral at the Seattle Public Library is amazing, but even pictures or videos don't do it justice. 

Even in the cities I tourist in, I do so by wandering about on transit. That can make it hard to explain why a city captivates me, or why it feels urbanist, especially if I didn't happen to take a picture of a particular experience. It's not easy to talk through the ordinary miracles of cities, rather than things like the British Museum or Stanley Park.

Carol 5:

There's just something about these tall towers next to an empty park in Toronto that speaks to me--and to Lesson 6.

Lesson 6: Some Terms Are Hard To Define

I am not saying I think I necessarily did a bad job defining the questions, but there are two sets of comparative questions I struggled with at times: the questions about whether you "can" live your life or get to work without a car, and the ones about how people react to density and to not having a car. The reason for this is that while I think these are actually the fundamental questions of a certain kind of urban living--if the answers are "no" or "negatively," you don't have access to a certain way of life that I value--they are also extremely context dependent. The above picture can help visualize why: these towers are super dense and you could totally live there without a car (there's a transit line underneath). But also they stand out from the surrounding area fairly extremely, which implies that a mile away from this spot the apparent answer to the same questions might be no.

This is where maybe another approach might help: thinking more about what the affordances of the city are (there's some $1000 vocab for you--I mean what it is that the city facilitates and what it makes more difficult) and about the cost of the ideal lifestyle there, rather than a binary yes/no. But of course, a bracket lends itself to yeses and nos, so that may be a structural issue there as well.

Carol 6:

This Pride light-up from Toronto's Village (whose branding is visible in the photo too) was meaningful to me when I saw it, and speaks to Lesson 7 as well.

Lesson 7: Wider Culture Matters Too

Again, this edged its way into some categories by sheer force, but I didn't include anything in the comparison about the larger cultural edifices into which these cities are embedded: the states, the countries, the Western civilization. Can you live life there as a trans person? As a gay person? As a Jew? As an atheist? And so on. And would you want to, or would it corrode you to do it?

These are key questions, and this bracket didn't acknowledge them. London is the home of the new Online Safety Act; does that affect urbanist living there? It must, but how?

Finally, I'll leave you with Carol 7, which is just a picture I really like that encapsulates a certain kind of urbanist living to me, and that I really like.

Carol 7:

The shops are open late at night, and you can walk there from the train station. 

Lessons and Carols usually end with Silent Night, and I guess for me, that is the equivalent.

CityBracket 2025: FINAL! London vs. Vancouver

Welcome to the final matchup in this summer's CityBracket 2025: the showdown between two international cities I love to visit, would totally love to live in, and no one can actually afford: London and Vancouver! 

Before we begin, let's remember how these cities got here. Vancouver faced down arguably the single hardest path to the final, certainly harder than London's, taking out its fellow Canadian city, Toronto, the American giant New York, and then the US capital itself, Washington DC in a series of close matchups. London, on the other hand, faced its toughest matchup (yet?) in the first round, where feisty Oxford struggled to a 4-8 loss--after which London wiped the floor with both Baltimore and even the mighty Boston (which had itself ousted Seattle and Chicago, both serious contenders in their own right). Who will win? Which city will get the completely unrecognized honor of being our CityBracket 2025 champion? Let's find out!

Category 1: Visiting Without A Car

a) How can you get to the city? 

Vancouver does well in terms of connecting its main airport to the main metro line, and having a fairly close to downtown terminus for its primary intercity rail, Amtrak Cascades. It also has an active ferry system to the rest of the most heavily populated parts of British Columbia.

London has Eurostar and major intercity services to all of the UK, along with multiple airports all connected by rail, and especially the new Elizabeth Line to Heathrow.

VERDICT: London 1, Vancouver 0

b) How do you get around?

Vancouver's main tourist areas are heavily concentrated downtown, or close to it, and the main downtown area is both compact and walkable. 

Stanley Park is a delight, and incredibly easy to get to.

London has a much wider area to cover for tourists, but a more comprehensive transit system for it as well. 

It's hard to avoid the tourist areas sometimes on a London bus.

VERDICT: London 2, Vancouver 0

c) What are the limits on a visitor without a car?

In Vancouver, it's only whether you can get to UBC and its museums via bus--can you navigate the system to do that?

In London, it's similarly about navigating the system: the whole network is impressive, but also neither the easiest nor the cheapest to find your way around in. And the area to cover (because of how much London has to offer) is much larger.

VERDICT: London 2, Vancouver 1

Category 2: Living Without A Car

a) Can you expect to get to work?

We've run these numbers before: London runs at about a quarter car commuters, while Vancouver is about half. That is reflected in the nature of the transit and active mobility systems: Vancouver's is strong for a fairly simple system, but London's complexity (see above) lends itself to a much easier time getting wherever you work from wherever you live.

Especially if you're willing to take the bus.

VERDICT: London 3, Vancouver 1

b) Can you live the rest of your life?

Here is where we pour one out for how ridiculously expensive the US as a whole is, since two straight US cities have failed to take this from insanely expensive London.

Vancouver is also insanely expensive, famously so. And yet...

The cost of living difference here is, on balance, in favor of Vancouver.

Yes, despite all that: living in London is somehow on average more expensive than living in Vancouver by enough that all the calculators that were showing it close to US cities show it worse than Vancouver. 

Cost of living isn't everything, of course (this is why Baltimore still lost this to London). But Vancouver does have the other things you'll need (groceries, schools, hospitals) accessible without a car--so this goes with the cost.

VERDICT: London 3, Vancouver 2

c) How are the basic amenities?

New Yorkers may want to look away, because although I gave Vancouver the victory here over NYC, I find London more in line with Washington for this: the city just has too many museums, parks, and other amenities (and good enough sidewalks and other basics) for Vancouver to make it up.

Vancouver is great to cycle in, especially along the seawall. It has great views and nature.

Even the built up parts look good to me, as a Pacific Northwestern by birth.

But, well...

London isn't ugly either, and that's without talking about the free museums.

Greece may want the Elgin Marbles back, but until they are repatriated, they are still visible in London

VERDICT: London 4, Vancouver 2

Category 3: Miscellaneous

a) Are there people on the street?

As always, the answer here is yes, but we're going to have to make some tight distinctions.

It's probably not fair to use Chinese New Year as a barometer.

Vancouver is built to put people on the street level:

London is just old, and so people are still there:

Given that one of these is downtown and one is 11 miles out of downtown in Croydon, I'm going to give this to London though.

VERDICT: London 5, Vancouver 2

b) Where is the city's urbanism going?

I am very impressed with both of these cities' trajectories for urbanism. London has completed the Elizabeth Line, modernized cyclepaths, and expanded the emissions zone for cars. I keep reemphasizing the BC upzone for Vancouver, because it is indeed a big deal, and the cycling and other urban infrastructure there also keeps improving.

For me, it comes down to this, which may be a bit simplistic but there you go: the cancellation of HS2--I'm sorry, "rescoping" to remove the point of it--and the current lack of plans to actually get it to Euston station make me doubt the political will in the UK to really make another major step for London's transport. Is it already better than Vancouver's? Yes. But trajectory-wise, this goes to Vancouver.

VERDICT: London 5, Vancouver 3

c) Is it functionally diverse?

I think this one is predictable from last round's results: if London is somewhat more segregated than the UK national average, with a white majority, whereas Vancouver doesn't have a single majority ethnic group, with lower segregation than similar cities, Vancouver tips this category. We do have the confounding variable that most studies of both these cities compare them to the US, not to each other--but I do think that Vancouver pulls slightly ahead in this category.

VERDICT: London 5, Vancouver 4

d) How do people there react to knowing you're not using a car?

It's appropriate that this is the category where London wins, because its congestion zone--and the fact that it reduces car use and car ownership so low, alongside options like public transit--is really a crowning jewel of its urbanism. Vancouverites would, based on averages, expect about a car per person or a car per two people; car ownership in London is maybe half of that.

Of course there are cars--people just don't expect you to actually own one.

VERDICT: London 6, Vancouver 4

e) How do people react to people living close together?

Well, Metro Vancouver has its iconic towers, and that has led to high density--for Canada.

There's no denying that a lot of people can live in towers like that.

London is just denser though: denser in the core, and denser overall. 

It has towers too.

And walkable, street-level density as well.

I love Vancouver, and I think it's utterly appropriate that it came closest of all these cities to knocking off London. But this category and the overall matchup have to go to London: the winner of CityBracket 2025!

VERDICT: London 7, Vancouver 4