TL;DR: Norway subsidised electric cars a lot, that money went to the rich more than the poor, and left them with less money to spend on transit which delivers better outcomes for cities.
TL;DR: Norway subsidised electric cars a lot, that money went to the rich more than the poor, and left them with less money to spend on transit which delivers better outcomes for cities.
“Most Norwegian cities now have more of a car-centric, American approach toward transportation than a multi-modal, European one,”
That’s a sad sentence to read, I always assumed Norway was like Sweden with amazing public transportation as well.
I think this is a failure of imagination on the part of the author. Norway is, on a whole, much more rural; a large portion of the population lives in small towns and villages in areas with difficult terrain (think fjords), where public transport beyond a bus is impractical due to population densities.
The public transport in Oslo and Bergen are fantastic - Norway’s only two large cities. Keeping in mind that over a quarter of the population of the entire country lives in these two, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
I see, that makes sense. I appreciate the lesson in Norway’s infrastructure.
I live in Oslo, and that’s not true for here at least. Oslo probably has one of the best public transit systems in the world, at least relative to its population. I never use any form of car, personal or taxi, I don’t even own a driving license, and I can easily get anywhere I want to go. At least within the city.
As soon as you leave the city though, you’re having a problem. Bicycle infrastructure is basically non-existent, cars heavily impeding buses - at least where I live - which delays them all the time and centralised bus hubs, which means that you always have to go to the bus hub first, change bus lines and then go to your destination.
This is also my biggest problem with the metro in Oslo. If you live slightly outside of Oslo but still along the metro line, the only way to travel perpendicular to the metro lines is often to take the metro towards the city, change lines and go back almost the same direction you came from.