How Public Transit Controls Car Markets

I grew up in Redmond Washington, a small but growing city about 30 minutes outside Seattle and is the home of Microsoft. Similarly, I live with my host family in Bad-Godesberg, the suburbs of Bonn. Bonn is just a 30-minute train ride to Cologne, and is the home of Deutsche Telekom, which is the largest cell and internet provider in Germany, who operates multiple different networks abroad, including T-Mobile in the US. Comparing the two, both environments are suburban areas right next to a city that is the home base for one of the largest companies in the nation, and just a short distance from a major city.

Similarly, the geography of these areas is similar as well. Both rest between sets of short mountains, which have since been expanded into to accommodate more suburban housing. The weather is very similar too, with all 4 seasons and occasional snow. In both places, gas is not exactly cheap either. With this in mind, you might expect to see a common trend among cars found on roads in both Redmond and Bonn, but that is simply not the case.

In Bonn, the most common car body type is the Hatchback. On any given street, you will most likely find 2-4 of such hatchbacks parked on the side of the street. These hatchbacks all have the same general characteristics, being very short, having front wheel drive, and sporting small wheels with tall sidewall tires. They tend to be very simple commuter cars, sporting very in terms of long road-trip amenities, and tend to be no frills. Common models include the VW Golf, VW Polo, Renault 5, and various Peugeot, Skoda, and Hyundai cars sprinkled in.

The second most common type of car you may find are station wagons. These station wagons are at most a foot longer than a classic sedan style car but have a roof that remains the same height almost all the way to the tail of the car. These cars put an emphasis on storage and carrying space, but for the most part retain familiar handling characteristics to sedans.

In contrast, Redmond is mostly populated with medium and large SUVs. Even young teen drivers can often be found driving some flavor of BMW X, Mercedes GLA/GLE, Lexus, Acura, or Honda SUV. Sprinkled in between might be a handful of long bodied Ford Expeditions or similar.

Full size sedans are the second most common car type. These are more often found on the roads going into Bellevue or Seattle proper but do make up a noticeable portion of the roads in Redmond.

As you can see, there is a big disparity between the types of vehicles found on the road in these two areas. I believe there are a couple of big infrastructure pieces that explain this disparity. Firstly, the Redmond and greater Seattle area’s public transportation system isn’t exactly very efficient or accessible, which increases the range and carrying capacity required of US cars. In Bonn, if you and 3 friends were to want to, say go into Cologne for dinner, simply take a tram to Bonn Hbf and take an RE5 train into Cologne! However, in the Redmond that just isn’t possible. The best you can do is pack all four friends into one car and drive into the city. This drives up the space needed inside the cars, as fitting 4 people in the cars goes from a “you’ll probably never do this, but you can” to an everyday occurrence. This in turn affects how the car designers manage rider comfort. In the small hatchbacks, the low mass of the car combined with the “scratchy” uneven brick roads lends well to controlling bumps via tire compliance. In comparison, the heavy weight of the larger SUV car body, combined with the high mass, means that engineers control the ride comfort through soft spring rates and high suspension travel.

Putting it all together, the biggest takeaway is that public transportation systems in an area directly influence the type of motor vehicles purchased and found on roads.

By: Kirk N

Sources:

Golf MK6 Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Golf_Mk6

Honda Accord Photo: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Accord

BMW X5 Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_X5

Mercedes E Class Wagon Photo: https://autodesignmagazine.com/en/