Low-wage residents are less likely to have access to a car, and commuter train lines and bus routes do not serve the south side of the Tri-State metro-region as well as they serve other parts of the region. Commuting times are even longer for those who commute across the region instead of following the hub and spoke system. Investment in public transport infrastructure does not sufficiently respond to demand for access to jobs, especially in lower -income neighbourhoods. While the Tri-State metro-region ranks high among OECD regions on many technology-based innovation indicators in terms of volume, its position has slipped and it is not among top regions when controlling for the size of its population and economy. For instance, in terms of patents per capita, the Tri-State metro-region ranked 23rd among OECD metro-regions and 11th among US metro-regions in 2007, the last year for which data are available, it ranked 27th and 12th, respectively, when adjusting for GDP (Table 1.5). These are hardly poor scores, but neither do they suggest that the Tri-State metro-region is fulfilling its innovation potential, particularly given that it ranks below so many other US metro-regions, including San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Houston.