I mean obviously but the point is that. If public transport was terrible then London wouldn’t be as big as it is today.
Are you suggesting that the growth of London should have been strangled by depriving it of the necessary public transport? The sheer size of it (in the 19th century) with residential areas that had populations far greater than local emploent could satisfy precluded many workers of the opportunity to walk or cycle to their work. This spurred the development of commuter public transport along keys radial routes allowing people to live further out from the centre which by the 1850s already fully built up. Thus in the latter years of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the railway companies worked with local authorities and developers to prove homes further along their ma line routes, (notably GER, GWR and Metropolitan companies).
With more compact provincial towns, and even cities, most of their workplaces were much more accessible from residential, - much of which was built by those same employers around theor locations.
Until the de-industrialisation of the UK, regional commuting was relatively rare outside London, when the government of the day's solution was to build motorways and other trunk routes right onto the centres of settlements hence a lower take up of rail commuting.
What surprises me though is just how terrible public transport in the North is considering the clutter of cities there. I’d expect fast and frequent high speed rail services between the cities and proper frequent Copenhagen S train style suburban rail and metro service.
It’s really embarrassing how terrible public transport is in the North compared to the Copenhagen with a metropolitan population of “just” 1 million.
Comparisons with Copenhagen and similar cities isn't relevant based on population, that place is a global.capital, with all.the additional transport needs that an international metropolitan brings.
