Passengers wait at a subway station in Berlin, Germany. Photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters.
The world is building mass transit networks faster than ever before, and ridership is increasing to match. But the United States continues to lag behind both Asia and Europe in mass transit. New York is the only North American city to rank among the global top-ten busiest transit systems.
That’s according to a report published by UITP, the International Association of Public Transport, which takes a close look at mass transit systems in 182 cities across the world. It defines transit systems or “metro networks” as “high-capacity urban rail systems, running on an exclusive right-of-way” that hold at least 100 passengers per train.
Urban mass transit systems have exploded in recent decades as the world’s population has rapidly urbanized. The graph below, from the report, charts the growth in the number of transit systems since the earliest systems, created in the late 19th century. There was a surge in the opening of new transit systems in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, but there was an even bigger surge in the past decade. From 2000 to 2009, 30 new systems opened; from 2010 to 2019, 45 new systems are predicted to open, 33 of those in the Asia-Pacific region alone.
Worldwide, mass transit carried 53 billion passengers in 2017—an increase of roughly 9 billion passengers since 2012, with most of that growth occurring in Asia, and the Middle East-North Africa region. Asian transit systems carry more than 26 billion passengers a year; European lines carry more than 10 billion passengers; Latin America nearly 6 billion and North America (U.S. and Canada) just 3.7 billion. Metro networks are most utilized in Eurasia, with the average inhabitant taking 117 trips last year, although simultaneously, Eurasia is the only region to see a decline in trips per capita.
Among the world’s cities, Tokyo has the most used system, with 3.46 billion trips, followed by those in Moscow, Shanghai, and Beijing. New York City is the only U.S. city with a transit system that numbers among the world’s ten busiest; many other U.S. cities saw their transit ridership decline in the past six years. Paris, the last leading European city, dropped off the list in 2015 and was replaced by New Delhi.
Top 10 Busiest Transit Systems (Annual Ridership in Billions)
Across the world, there are nearly 650 transit lines served by more than 11,000 stations and covering nearly 14,000 kilometers. Just between 2015 and 2017, roughly 1,900 kilometers of new track was put into service. Most went towards already existing metro systems, but about 30 percent went to brand new lines in China, India, and Iran.
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Interestingly, most transit systems across the world are dominated by underground subway systems: About 70 percent of Asian stops are underground, 80 percent of Eurasian ones, 75 percent of stops in Europe, and more than half of the stops in Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. North America is the only region where fewer than half of transit stops are underground.
Over the next five years, the study projects that more than 200 new transit lines will open across the world. While there is much talk of driverless cars, the reality is that driverless or fully-automated mass transit is coming on stream much more quickly. Even though fully automated systems make up just 7 percent of transit systems today, the study predicts the rapid “mainstreaming” of fully automated metro transit, which does not require any human staff on board, in the coming years.
Transit is a key component of modern urban infrastructure. It contributes to the density and clustering that drive innovation and productivity, extends the boundaries of cities’ metro areas while creating opportunities for denser development around suburban stops, and makes for less-stressful commutes. While most of the rest of the world, especially rapidly urbanizing centers in Asia, is investing heavily in transit, the U.S. lags far behind.
CityLab editorial fellow Claire Tran contributed research and editorial assistance to this article.
Richard Florida is a co-founder and editor at large of CityLab and a senior editor at The Atlantic. He
is a university professor in the University of Toronto’s School of
Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a distinguished fellow at
New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate and visiting
fellow at Florida International University.
