Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

I live across the bridge in Malmö, and visit Copenhagen infrequently. It really is quite a lovely city, and our proximity seems to create a faux competition for Sweden. Since Malmö enjoys many of the same benefits in transportation but without such population density.

People -love- their cars. And Denmark/Sweden try to dissuade people from owning them with heavy taxes and expensive parking.

But I’ve noticed if you ever try to take a car from someone who has one they with fight you until you’re burger. To many people it means freedom, and until public transport and bikes are much stronger alternatives you’re not going to make any friends.

Which is a catch-22. You need to limit cars because they consume a lot of space and make a lot of noise (and can be dangerous) but few have an appetite for limiting cars.

I think if there’s a change it needs to be very gradual, over generations.

View on HN

People love their car, they just hate all the other cars. That is why car adverts always show ridiculously empty roads and cities.

Sometimes you have to recognize that in reality things are unsustainable and we are stuck in a local optimum far below what could be. And no, gradual doesn't get you out of a local optimum, and besides, we don't have the time. It takes a modal shift, and it needs to happen fast.

> But I’ve noticed if you ever try to take a car from someone who has one they with fight you until you’re burger.

I don't own a car, and never have. I live in Stockholm, a very car-hostile city. I commute the 20km each way by bus/subway or e-bike (in the summer).

And it's absolutely miserable.

The commute that would have taken 20 minutes by car instead takes at least an hour, if everything matches up perfectly.

Any large shopping is an exercise in misery, where you're stuck buying one thing, taking it home, and coming back for the next thing in the shop next door, because you have nowhere to store stuff temporarily (and your (/bike's) carrying capacity is tiny anyway). And of course each roundtrip, again, takes 3x what it would otherwise.

Want to meet up with friends? Take the hour+ trip to downtown, then as much again to get to their place, since the system was only designed for getting people to work and back. Oh, and add another 50% since you're in the weekend/evening where the traffic is reduced further.

And then you wonder why there is a loneliness epidemic, or why people get mad when you want to take away the least depressing mode of transportation that they have.

The same also matches my experience of Copenhagen. But of course you're not going to see that when you live in a hotel in the middle of the city for a few days.

I am not so sure Stockholm is that car-hostile. There is a congestion tax, but they just spent $3 billion dollars on the Stockholm Bypass motorway. It is just very centralized, made worse by the housing market. Rush hour traffic gets jammed quickly in bottle necks. They also haven't built much subway in the last few decades. There isn't for example really a ring line, which most other systems have. So going anywhere but the city center is hard. Stockholm also has very near suburb, there are single family homes just a few kilometers from the city center. Built for cars no less, but quite expensive. They sort of tried to complement that with the "job/housing/work-areas", but that idea is mostly lost to time. I think it is more that greater Stockholm just isn't very well planned these days. But I guess Copenhagen could be similar, because it isn't cheap either.

And if you make owning car expensive, owning them becomes a wealth signal and symbol for success. And then many aspire to become successful so that at the end they are finally able to afford the car and all the taxes which come with it.

> People -love- their cars ... if you ever try to take a car from someone who has one they with fight you until you’re burger.

People also love guns. And particularly if they need them to be safe. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to make them unnecessary.

Why faux?

Because Copenhagen isn’t competing at all.

Haha, I actually laughed. That's harsh man, but it's funny because it's true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com