I wrote a recent article about cities that feature mass transit but do not really feature a conventional regional or suburban railway network, such as Hong Kong or Vancouver. These cities can suffer from a lack of fast service across the city and suburban transit coverage, which can make some types of trips less convenient.
However, the situation where a city *does* have regional and suburban trains but does not have mass transit is just as real, and in today's article I'll talk about it and its impacts in detail.
There's a certain sense I get when talking about cities like Vancouver with people living in cities with regional rail that they are massively missing out by not having it, but I actually think the same applies to cities without mass transit.
The most obvious city to raise this issue with might be Zurich, Switzerland. Zurich is not a giant city, but it does have a lot of public transport. It also famously killed plans for a metro (U-Bahn since Zurich is German speaking).
Zurich is also in Switzerland, which, like Japan does so much right in public transport that people sometimes forget the places it misses the mark. The Swiss model of a lot of one-seat rides and timed transfers is absolutely a good one ,but there are some limitations associated with it and thus with Zurich's train services that are worth noting.
Fundamentally, what makes the Swiss model good is that with very little infrastructure and very few trains operating, you are able to provide a good passenger experience. But there is no free lunch, so running less trains and building less infrastructure can create problems or unstable conditions, and it might not work at all if you don’t have that famous Swiss coordination!
There are of course lots of other cities in Europe that don't have the size or national importance to have justified the investment in rapid transit. These cities are larger in the UK (for example Birmingham) likely because of high construction cost, but also because of the rather limited way “rapid transit” is thought about in the Anglosphere, where light metros are far less common than continental Europe or East Asia.
Dutch cities have an interesting approach here. While Amsterdam and Rotterdam have built metros, they generally use a lot of existing rail right of way and thus end up not really feeling completely like the Metro's of other places, but we can discuss that more later. India and South Africa both have substantial legacy electric suburban and regional rail, and while Indian cities are building metros these days, they did without them for a long time.
Probably not the first place that comes to mind for you, but possibly my favourite example of regional rail without mass transit comes from Australia. Every major Australian city has some electric regional rail, and most of them are investing in major expansion projects for their networks. Sydney does have its current one half “Metro” line, but even this reuses old heavy suburban rail infrastructure as will much of the completed line down to Bankstown, which is being converted from suburban train use. (If comments bring up the Brisbane Metro or Adelaide O-Bahn I will be truly concerned!~)
Now, given there are a large number of cities that are in this category — having trains to the suburbs but, no high capacity urban rail (trams don’t make the cut I am afraid, but, do obviously exist in several of the cities I have discussed) — One starts to wonder what the impacts might be.
One of the areas of impact I would note prominently is that the different transport service and capacity provision of suburban rail is bound to drive some different land use patterns — a big one being the tendency for suburbanization and then extremely strong city centres. This may seem counterintuitive, but the limited spread of most legacy rail networks approaching a city centre and the high cost of city centre tunnels is likely to lead to concentration in the core, whereas the many branches in the suburbs encourage lower densities.
By comparison, metro lines tend to have fewer branches if any, and this more uniform transport provision likely drives a more uniform development pattern. You can see this comparing Toronto to Sydney, and Melbourne, cities that are only a little but smaller but that have downtowns or CBDs that are only a fraction the size of Toronto’s. Melbourne’s CBD is bigger than Sydney’s probably thanks to the reduced geographical barriers (i.e. a harbour!) and the larger CBD tram network, but it still is only about half as big as Toronto’s, which more or less follows the current Line 1 subway “U” and the under construction Ontario Line. What I will say is that both the Melbourne and Sydney CBDs feel much denser than Toronto’s downtown, probably in large part because office development must be concentrated around a smaller number of major stations.
Now what's interesting, is that I would argue the smaller city centres in the cities probably drive additional growth in sub-centres. These sites are often well connected and can pick up excess development demand from the main centre. I think you see this perhaps most notably at locations such as Chatswood, Mascot, and Parramatta to the north, south and west of Sydney's CBD. While Toronto does have comparably large suburban nodes, they tend to be less well connected on rapid transit, while each of the sub-centres in Sydney have multiple high capacity rail lines that drives higher densities.
I would imagine a big factor driving Melbourne’s larger CBD would be the black of comparable subcenters when compared to Sydney. Thus the extremely high density developments south of Melbourne’s CBD and those in the Docklands which rely heavily on tram connections for public transportation.
Perhaps the exact type of urban form that you would not see grow in a city without rapid transit is a New York or a Seoul — cities that have extremely strong linear corridors of development activity and transportation infrastructure. Of course, other cities like London, Tokyo, and Sydney do have such corridors, but more often than not development follows rail lines that probably aren't predominantly under streets (at least in the case of JR and the deep tube!).
Now, I'd actually make the argument that urban rail systems that follow the regional rail without mass transit pattern are actually possibly uniquely well-suited to modern anglosphere cities. And that's because they come part and parcel with the sort of polarized land use that predominates in cities like Toronto, Sydney, and London.
At major station sites, you have both the political capital and land values to justify enormous density, and probably also the community buy-in for substantial transportation infrastructure. In these interstitial spaces, the cost and visual prominence of corridors can be low, and the amount of rail service provided will also be low relative to say a metro. Essentially, the cities need density to grow, and in English-speaking cities putting all the density in as few locations as possible seems politically preferable.
The deviation from this rather reasonable and predictable pattern (where density roughly correlates with transport capacity) is a big part of what makes Toronto feel so vexing. Major interchange sites such as Cedarvale, Kennedy, or Bloor-Dundas West (discussed in a previous article) have seen comparitively little intensification, while single line rapid transit stations like North York Centre, Steeles-Yonge, or Golden Mile (served by a surface tram) are already or are planned to be forests of high rise development.
The up shot of this is that cities that invest in suburban rail seem to do a better job with regional and intercity rail. The point here being that if you're one of the cities that relies on metro (or North America light rail) for everything, your much less likely to have the type of institutional knowledge, equipment and infrastructure that enables longer distance services. Personally, I feel like you can draw a pretty linear line across a graph of Toronto, Australian cities, and a city like Zurich where suburban rail transport provision increases, so too does regional and intercity. And you can sort of trace this backwards as well: Toronto is the only Canadian city making a big push into mainline suburban rail. And Toronto also appears to be at the nexus of many new and upgraded longer distance services in Canada — from GO services to Niagara Falls, London, and Barrie to the revived Ontario Northlander train.
And I don't think what Toronto is doing should be unique. Adapted properly, the Australian model of suburban and regional rail development and poly-centrism feels like one of the most promising ways to move North American cities in a more sustainable direction. An interesting side-by-side comparison can be made however with Montreal and Vancouver, which are adopting the suburban metro approach — with dense and well connected urban areas centered in much less well connected regions.
Now, if you've been enjoying the series, make sure to subscribe and stay tuned, because I plan on writing a final edition which talks about cities that are able to bring all of these development patterns and transportation network designs together to create some of the largest and most vibrant cities on earth.