Manchester and Chicago Have More in Common Than Either Would Probably Admit

Manchester and Chicago have more in common than either would probably admit.

Both are the great "second city" of their country — a phrase Chicago has worn for so long that it has become part of the identity, and one Manchester has never needed to claim because everyone in Britain already knows it.

Both built their first fortunes on heavy industry: cotton in one, meatpacking and steel in the other. Both lost those fortunes and spent decades working out what came next. Both are fiercely, sometimes defensively, proud of being not-the-capital. And both, on an ordinary weekday morning, send a few million people to work by a mixture of car, bus, rail and — in Manchester's case — tram, in a journey that takes roughly half an hour.

Neither city requires permission from the capital to be interesting.

The psychology of the second city

There is a particular mindset that second cities develop, and it is worth pausing over because it shapes the commute as much as any transport map.

In a capital city, the journey to work is a journey towards the centre of national life — the place where the decisions are made, the money is concentrated, the important buildings stand. In a second city, the journey is something subtly different. It is a journey towards the centre of a place that has its own gravity, its own economy, its own reasons for being, and that has learned not to wait for the capital's approval.

Manchester did not become interesting because London noticed it. Manchester was interesting — the world's first industrial city, the place where the stored-program computer was born, the city that taught Britain to trade in ideas — and London eventually caught up with the fact. Chicago's story rhymes: a city built on a swampy lakeshore that constructed modern America, and that has spent a century being called the "Second City" with a mixture of irritation and quiet pride.

This changes the morning. The commuter in a second city is not travelling towards the national story. They are travelling towards a local one. And local stories, it turns out, are the ones people actually belong to.

How long is the average Chicago commute?

The average commute in Chicago is around 33.5 minutes one way, according to the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2024 — down from 35.3 minutes in 2019, a gradual shortening that has coincided with the rise of remote and hybrid work. (The figure varies by geography: a five-year estimate for the wider Cook County area sits nearer 31 minutes. Different boundaries produce different averages; the broad picture is a commute in the low-to-mid thirties.)

Either way, Chicago's commute is longer than the American average of 27.2 minutes, and longer than most of its peer cities. It is a city that takes some getting to.

How do people commute in Manchester?

The average commute in Greater Manchester is around 31 minutes one way, according to Centre for Cities analysis of UK transport data — making it, like Chicago, longer than the national average (28 minutes across Great Britain), and the longest of the UK's big city regions outside London.

The mix is broader than Chicago's. Manchester's Metrolink — the largest light-rail network in the UK — carried around 42 million passenger journeys in the year to March 2024, according to the Department for Transport, a figure that has been climbing steadily. Buses carry the bulk of public-transport commuters. Rail connects the city to the wider region. And, as in almost every British city, the car remains the single most common mode for the journey to work.

Is Manchester comparable to Chicago?

Not in size. Chicago's metropolitan area is several times the population of Greater Manchester. But the comparison was never really about scale. It is about character.

Both are inland industrial cities that became modern ones. Both have a working identity that survived the disappearance of the work that created it. Both have a relationship with a more dominant coastal city — London, New York — that is equal parts rivalry, resentment and genuine affection. And both have invested heavily in regeneration: rebuilt centres, restored waterfronts, new tram and rail lines, the slow conversion of industrial memory into somewhere people want to be rather than merely have to be.

The waterfront and the warehouse

Stand at Salford Quays on a weekday morning and you can see the transformation literally — the docks where Manchester's goods once left for the world are now studios, museums and flats, and the tram that runs past them is the cleanest symbol of a city that rebuilt its transport while it rebuilt its economy.

Chicago's equivalent is the 'L', the elevated railway that loops above the downtown and threads through neighbourhoods that were themselves built around industry. Both cities wear their industrial past in the street pattern: the warehouses converted to lofts, the brick that survived, the railway lines that found a second life carrying commuters instead of coal.

The commute in both cities, then, is partly a journey through a place that is still becoming itself — where the old use of the city and the new one are visible in the same view, and the morning train rolls past both.

What does the daily journey tell us about a city?

More than the grand architecture, sometimes. The way a city moves its workers in the morning is a reasonably honest account of what it values.

A city whose commute is mostly car is a city that has decided people will spread out. A city whose commute is mostly rail is a city that has decided to concentrate. Manchester and Chicago sit in the middle of that spectrum — both dense enough to make public transport matter, both sprawling enough to keep the car central. Their mornings are a negotiation between the two, and the negotiation is visible from any bus window or 'L' car.

There is also the question of who the city is for. The second city, historically, has been a city of arrivals — of people who came for work from somewhere else, and whose children grew up speaking with the local accent. The commute is the thread that ties those people to the place. You can tell a great deal about how welcome a city has made someone by how easily they can get to it in the morning.

Neither city requires permission from the capital to be interesting. But both, on a Monday morning, require a working bus service.

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The Commute Exchange

Two second cities. One question.

What does your journey add up to over a year?

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approximately 230 hours a year.

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About 230 hours a year.

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The Atlantic Shelf

Four books for the second city

• UK · Female authorEstates — Lynsey HanleyWhy it belongs here: Hanley's intimate history of British council housing is also a history of class, place and belonging — of how the city you grow up in shapes the work you feel entitled to do. For two cities whose identity was forged in industry and is still being renegotiated, that question of who feels the city is theirs is the whole story.
• UK · Male authorA Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain — Owen HatherleyWhy it belongs here: Hatherley tours the regeneration schemes of post-crash Britain — the docks, quays and "stunning developments" that were meant to renew cities like Manchester and that often arrived looking oddly identical. It is the clearest account of what a second city builds when it is trying to stop being a ruin.
• US · Female authorThe South Side — Natalie Y. MooreWhy it belongs here: a portrait of Chicago and American segregation that shows how the city's neighbourhoods — and therefore its commutes — are shaped by lines drawn decades ago. Where you live still decides how you travel, and Moore explains why with the clarity of someone who grew up on the wrong side of the line.
• US · Male authorThe Third Coast — Thomas DyjaWhy it belongs here: Dyja's account of Chicago in its postwar prime explains how a second city built modern America — music, architecture, publishing, politics — without ever quite being given the credit. It is the case for taking the second city seriously on its own terms.

From the imprint

Three Dead People Who Understand Your Workplace

James Allen

Because the second-city commute is, among other things, a daily negotiation of identity — who you are at work, who you are at home, and how the half-hour between them is where the comparison quietly happens. Three unexpected guides from history have been there before.

Buy on Kindle — £4.99Read more →

Cross the Atlantic

More city-to-city journeys

• London vs New York: Who Has the Better Commute? →The Tube and the subway move two global cities every morning. The similarities end considerably later than either city might like to admit.
• Birmingham vs Houston: What Happens When a City Expects You to Drive? →Two major working cities, two very different scales — and a morning increasingly shaped by the car.

Explore the full Atlantic Commute →

Make the journey useful

Three small ways to spend the time

Commuter Concierge →Find me something worth reading for the journey.The Workday Reset →See how the working week is actually functioning.

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People also ask

Quick questions, honest answers

• How long is the average Chicago commute?

  Around 33.5 minutes one way in 2024, according to the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey — down from 35.3 minutes in 2019. A five-year estimate for the wider Cook County area is closer to 31 minutes; different geographies produce different averages, but Chicago's commute is consistently longer than the US national mean of 27.2 minutes.

• How do people commute in Manchester?

  By a mix of car, bus, tram and rail. Greater Manchester's average commute is around 31 minutes one way (Centre for Cities) — the longest of the UK's big city regions outside London. The Metrolink tram network carried around 42 million passenger journeys in the year to March 2024 (Department for Transport), with buses carrying the largest share of public-transport commuters.

• Is Manchester comparable to Chicago?

  Not in population, but in character. Both are inland industrial cities that became modern ones; both have a working identity that outlasted the industries that created it; both sit in the shadow of a more dominant coastal city and have a complicated, proud relationship with that fact.

• What does the daily journey tell us about a city?

  A great deal. A mostly-car commute suggests a city built for dispersal; a mostly-rail commute suggests one built for concentration. Manchester and Chicago sit between the two, and their morning mix of car, bus, tram and rail is a reasonably honest account of how each city has chosen to arrange work and home.

Sources & methodology

Where the figures come from

These figures are useful for broad comparison but come from different national surveys and should not be read as a perfectly like-for-like league table. UK city-region averages are drawn from Centre for Cities analysis of UK transport data; US figures from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Methods, years and the precise populations counted differ. Where a number is approximate, it is marked.

• Centre for Cities — Integrated transport: the size of the prize for mayors (Greater Manchester average commute 31 minutes)
• US Census Bureau — Commuting (Journey to Work), American Community Survey 2024 (mean travel time 27.2 minutes; Chicago ~33.5 minutes)
• Department for Transport — Light rail and tram statistics, England: year ending March 2024 (Manchester Metrolink 42.0 million passenger journeys)
• Chicago Transit Authority — Ridership reports (CTA served 309 million trips across all routes in 2024)
• Department for Transport — Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2024 Domestic Travel (GB average commute 28 minutes)

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