Car supremacy is a big wedge issue in Norway, which is paradoxically a big oil exporter, and the worlds leader in electric vehicle usage. It even has has its own single issue political party, I wonder if big oil money is behind it?
https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norways-drivers-rally-against-r...
The way the green change has been implemented here in Norway has unfortunately often been extremely conservative (instead of progressive) - the well-off living centrally in the cities gets massive subsidies for purchasing their Teslas while the less fortunate needs to pay hefty tolls for their old gasoline cars.
It's funny what terms we choose (framing) can do. "death tax" instead of "inheritance tax", "driver's rights" instead of "driver's privileges." People all too often forget that driving in public places requires a license, it's not a right, it's a privilege that has to be earned.
I would argue FNB is a prime example of democracy working for the people. The two established ruling parties kept wringing money from people using bompenger until they had enough and took a lot of power for themselves.
I'm quite new to the city myself, but I'm quite surprised by how much people complain about public transit and about cars getting increasingly banned from the city center. I would agree that the train service leaves something to be desired (but then again, I moved here from the train heaven that is Switzerland). But the subway, busses and trams are A+.
I'm like eehhh, okay, wait till you see the United States!
The only culture shock to me is that union strikes can actually have an affect on convenience or quality of life, they're more like mosquitos buzzing in your ear if a protest has gone on for over a week in the US. I don't have an opinion, and that's part of the privilege!
Try Japan. Trains run on time to the second, so precisely that time tables printed on paper to the second are accurate.
The issue is that it can't be modernized to be faster and quieter in an economical way. Actually the issue is that its too uneconomical to do so, the current trains are not economical. This is whether we are referring to that high traffic corridor or to anywhere else.
- Northeast Corridor - Makes a solid operating profit (normally), run by Amtrak.
- State-supported corridor services - The states are basically paying the subsidy required to run the service and deciding what they want. If the state wants to upgrade the line for faster service, run more trains, etc, and they want to pay for it, Amtrak will run it. In some cases, the states (WA + CA come to mind) own or part-own the equipment being run as well. This is most other "practical" services (NY Empire Service, WA/OR Cascades, etc) and where you're seeing most improvements/investments.
- Long-distance network - They run once a day or less, they're where most of the hours/days late horror stories come from, they almost all lose money, federal government pays and dictates that they run it. Mostly impractical as transportation for people who have any other option for how to get somewhere. That said, the loss isn't that big as a financial number (in part, because there's not that much service), and it's basically a matter of political calculus as well....lots of rural senators who sign off on Amtrak funding in substantial part because of their one or two trains a day.
In the US, freight trains have priority over passenger trains. As far as I know, generally in Europe it's the opposite.
Amtrak gets severely outcompeted on most routes by a somewhat informal "chinatown" bus network.
Of course, the reasons are somewhat different, too. In the UK the problem is mostly that the tracks are very heavily timetabled with passenger trains, such that there's very little slack: an issue with one service can screw up an entire chunk of the network with effects that last for hours. In the US, freight trains have priority outside the Northeast Corridor, so we would get looped for several hours to wait for a train of oil tankers going the other way.
I never understood why transport unions effectively run their strikes against the passengers instead of against the governments (most of them are state owned or heavily subsidized here in Europe.) They should go to protest in front of the government offices and not jeopardizing the lives of citizens, who could be their allies. Instead everybody ends up hating transport workers. My bet: a traditional strike helps the careers inside the unions. Going against the government doesn't.
But for humans to actually do all of these things is extremely hard. We only recently were very much like a primate we see in the wild. We have tons of ambition and imagination but all the flaws of a prototype intelligent creature. We can't always think clearly, emotions often get in the way when we can, we get tired, we have conflicting drives and feedback loops that mean we are never truly satisfied no matter how good we have it.
such is life.
You mention Swiss train service for example which seemed pretty great as a visitor--but it sure wasn't cheap as is true of a lot of European train service. Ditto for the Shinkanzen in Japan.
My personal experience is Boston. As someone who takes rail into the city and then the subway maybe a few times a year, it seems just fine. When I depended on it for regular commuting, I did not love it.
The thing is, if you're not a visitor, you'd buy an AG or a demi-tarif (perhaps with a contribution from your employer). The former gives you free unlimited use on almost all public transit (including trains and busses), or alternatively, the latter gives you approximately a 50% discount on the price you paid as a tourist. The latter is quite commonly sponsored by your employer – and even if not, both types pay off very quickly if you actually commute by public transit.
Considering that a 1st class return ticket from Zurich to Bern is 180 Francs (2nd class 102) just three or four longer train rides can make it worthwhile.
The better option (if you're not living in Switzerland) may be the Swiss Travel Pass[1], which gives you free travel for a number of days on virtually the whole Swiss train and public transport network (excluding the most mountainous connections and cable cars, which are usually private and there you get a 50% discount) plus a number of other goodies.
Prices are comparable to what you pay for a JR Rail Pass in Japan. And that's a helluva buy.
In any case practically nobody pays full price for longer range train travel in Switzerland.
[1] https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-ch/planning/transport-accom...
I live in Copenhagen myself, but I grew up 100km outside of Copenhagen. Using a car to go back and forth from there to Copenhagen takes approximately 1 hour each way. Using public transportation all the way takes closer to 2 hours. Using a combination takes 1h 30min on a good day.
Some people move out of cities because they want the countryside. But other people are forced to do so because of prices. Banning cars from cities seems to only think of people who lives inside it and not how difficult it will be for a lot of people already "taxed" with hour long commutes because of stupidly expensive housing combined with centralization of workplaces.
I don't know where you live. What I do know is in many cities they run 2-4 train in for those who start work at 8am, and then run them back out at 5 pm after the people get off work. If this is your case, as it is for many, then I agree. They don't want you to take the train to those evening events.
It doesn't have to be this way. A train could run every 5 minutes all day long. If your city did this would you still insist on driving?
The fact that it's cheaper for three people to take a taxi instead of going with public transport doesn't help either.
The train runs about every 90 minutes outside of rush hour. So it's a non-starter for a night event.
So, sure, I'd use a much faster and far more frequent train if it existed. But that's a wildly different situation from what exists today. And this is a US location (Boston/Cambridge) that has relatively good transit--and I live fairly close to an exurban train station.
i live a similar distance from a larger city, and here it's quite the reverse. it takes one hour on the train, and two hours by car.
Want to go to Copenhagen, sure, take the train. Need to get somewhere inside Copenhagen? Just take the S trains from the train station until you reach one of the smaller stops, get on a bus, walk a few hundred metres, and get on the metro, and then change to another bus.
As you say, getting to Copenhagen is easy. Getting around between two points not connected by the same types of public transport? It's a time-consuming nightmare. It's a good thing down-town Copenhagen is a good city for biking, or it would be a total traffic disaster.
I'd say that at 100 km you're no longer talking about that city's public transit anymore (for a city this size). At 50 km I'd maybe agree with you. That's also a bit of what I meant to indicate with the Swiss trains comment – the (heavy rail) train services indeed aren't great around Oslo.
> I live in Copenhagen myself, but I grew up 100km outside of Copenhagen. Using a car to go back and forth from there to Copenhagen takes approximately 1 hour each way. Using public transportation all the way takes closer to 2 hours. Using a combination takes 1h 30min on a good day.
But then again, in fairness, at 100 km outside of Copenhagen you're halfway to Germany! It's getting to be a stretch for a commute anyway, is it not?
> Banning cars from cities seems to only think of people who lives inside it and not how difficult it will be for a lot of people already "taxed" with hour long commutes because of stupidly expensive housing combined with centralization of workplaces.
Well, in return, those people do get vastly cheaper housing (I'm well aware that suburban housing around Oslo and Copenhagen is still very very expensive, but once you start hitting the 100 km range that certainly stops being the case).
Adapting cities to be car-friendly make them sprawly, congested or pedestrian-unfriendly. Or all three.
If you had less intra city public transport and biking you would take even longer to get to your destination in the city because now you’d be taxing the same roads with people who are going 2 kms via car instead of on a bike. Further, as happened in many American cities, entire neighborhoods would be razed to build highways and parking lots to support those cars further reducing housing capacity in the city center, and making housing even more expensive.
But the reality for most is that people get around by bike and public transport and tend to prefer that to getting stuck in traffic and then having to hunt for parking space.
I live in Berlin which is unusually car friendly for a European city because of the German car lobby. You can literally drive up to places like the Alexanderplatz and expect to find a spot to park there (with some difficulty). But even in Berlin, owning a car is not a given for most people that live there. It's just not very practical. I've never bothered owning one and probably never will. With what I save on not owning a car, I can easily afford to rent cars or use taxis/ubers when I need to; which is not that often actually.
Berlin is comparatively unorganized when it comes to protecting bike traffic. Coming from the Netherlands, it feels a bit like a third world country on this front. Infrastructure is poor/non existent and Berlin excels at creating safety challenged situations for cyclists where you randomly get to mingle with heavy traffic, deal with delivery vans using the bike lanes as parking areas, etc. Mostly places like Oslo and other bike friendly cities differ from this by separating flows of traffic systematically. Of course compared to the US, Germany is still pretty good.
I hiked the Haute Route last year, and while we were only on the trains and buses a handful of times, it was flawless every time. Like, they had things scheduled down to the minute, and no, not some multiple of 5 minutes, literal "train arrives at 10:42, train leaves at 10:44". Clean too. So nice.
There are two good ways to run a good transport system: a carefully planned timetable so that you always know when your train arrives, and once you get on all your connections are easy to make. The other is as fast and frequent as possible, you never know when your next train will arrive but it will be soon enough that you don't care anyway. The second is somewhat better, but vastly more expensive.
Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund owns 2% of the entire world's publicly traded stocks.
They have so much money the fight over what to do with it.
They are an Oil rich state, like Qatar, Kuwait.
When you have that kind of surplus, a lot of things become easy.
For the rest of the world, the issue is money: either you raise taxes, increase fares, take on more debt (or invade a rich country), none of which are good options.
Luckily, the city isn’t that large so walking works most of the time.
/sarcasm
It is actually comparing Apples and Oranges.