Stockholm to ban petrol and diesel cars from centre from 2025
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I'm appalled at the people here saying you need a car to lead a full life. A car-dependent life is an empty and sad one for many of us. I moved to the Netherlands with my family (two young daughters) and it has been _absolutely fantastic_ to be able to just bike.... everywhere. Or get a train. or bus. Or, sometimes, use a car-share vehicle. It's absolute freedom. And I'm a hell of a lot less worried about my kids being killed by drivers - the leading cause of dead kids in the US.
Even here there's too many Dodge Rams though. And large SUV's - especially electric ones - are increasingly popular.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
of course if you moved there from the USA (which I assume you did?) the car situation there is not that much better than other European countries.
The title says "Travel Distance per person day by main travel mode for urban mobility on all days". That is ambiguous, but suggests that the numbers are actually the share of the travel distance for peoples' main mode, meaning that people who need to travel further in a day tend to have cars, to an overwhelming extent.
That is still a coherent situation in a world where most people don't use cars because their daily travel needs only involve short distances (e.g. because they live in an area where all of their needs are met within a short range).
25% walking 48% biking 5% public transport 18% car
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share
or
https://www.cbs.nl/-/media/_pdf/2020/14/modal-split-2018-gem...
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/16/welcome-cycle...
And the thing is - Utrecht is amazing. I don't think people there are bemoaning their sad existence lacking in freedom or mobility. But part of the success of Utrecht and Houten is taking space away from cars and giving it to bikes (and walking and public transport). I'm struggling to find a source but recently Utrecht determined that a street had too much traffic and was clogged with cars so the solution was that obviously it needed more throughput - so it should be made in to a bike route.
I just wish I hadn't needed to move 8,000 km to have this level of freedom.
https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2023/16/more-traffic-deaths-in...
[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-est...
My point being: it's not the mode of personal transport, but approach to safety that ultimately makes the numbers. The Dutch are unwilling to mandate bike helmets, saying that it would reduce cycling.
This begs the question: what's more important really?
I'm ambivalent. I personally think a helmet saved my life when I was riding in Sacramento but I ride much more slowly here in NL (about 8-11 mph). I wouldn't mind if helmets were normalized but (as noted at wikipedia) that makes using OV-fiets, etc. more of a hassle.
Certainly a helmet is a good idea when riding a faster e-bike.
The stories I hear how helmets save lives typically don't involve other vehicles - my personal is actually from skiing, as I borrowed a helmet from a friend who had to end his vacation early and I think that saved me from a severe concussion, because a few hours later I fell face-first on compacted snow and couldn't get myself together for a few minutes afterwards.
> that makes using OV-fiets, etc. more of a hassle.
Perhaps, but are we about road safety or are we about popularizing cycling, traffic deaths be damned?
My manager uses a rental bike to commute and he always has his helmet on when phoning in during a break in his commute because he has three kids and no intention of orphaning them.
I see it as a question of priorities. I'm against car-oriented infrastructure because I believe some people(20% at least) really shouldn't drive and I care about safety. Bicycles don't seem to deliver on that front either - at least until we figure out what's causing this increase and why the heck aren't all these seniors using public transport?
It's also not at all clear that the spike we're discussing is due to helmetless bicycle riders (notice that deaths for car occupants tick up in similar proportion).
To your prioritization point, there's a lot of evidence that increasing the number of cyclists on the road makes interactions with cars safer for all cyclists (because drivers are habituated to looking for them), so any intervention that decreased the number of cyclists to make them "safer" could have inverse consequences.
And that way I don't have to screw around with taking my own car to the shop for (oil changes, tyres, brake jobs, whatever), or having it inspected annually, or shopping around for insurance, etc.
My original comment was about removing cars from the city centre, which is great for people who are _not_ in cars because, of course, drivers kill a lot of people and biking to school with your 6 year old is utterly TERRIFYING when someone decides to cut in front of them in a giant truck. Cars make the world worse for everyone around them (including those who are in _other_ cars!) and it's kinda rude to use one in a city.
You need to offer other methods to get around first then add them.
On the flip side, being required to drive everywhere because there is no transit option is a negative impact on quality of life, especially in cities.
Ultimately it comes down to how good the transit infrastructure is. Some cities make transit feel effortless and get you anywhere you need to be; others make you battle your way through it and lose a lot of time.
Obviously not a solution for every situation, but if you only need a car occasionally then it would likely work out well.
The "Not Just Bikes" video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OObwqreAJ48
Personally I only drive once a week at most, but there isn't a car share scheme locally. If one started up that was cost effective and convinient enough then I'd consider it.
- Car won't available when you need it.
- You will come to a car, which will have steering wheel and driver's seat in a setup incompatible with your physique, so you need to waste your time to set it back. Every. Damn. Time.
- Car will be dirty. All the time. Dog hair, food crumbs, trash (i.e. coffee cups, cans). You will take it out and next time it will be back
- If you are sharing with a smoker, I hope that you like smoky smell of your car.
- Car will be always empty (gas, battery) because previous user has no incentive to fill it up.
- Minor accidents will go unreported, and then you will be wondering, where this scratch came from, why is this mirror busted or why I need to hold my steering wheel 10 degrees to the left to drive straight.
- Everybody will try to evade maintenance fees - You want money for winter tires? I don't drive in winter man... 2 weeks later your co-owner will want to drive, because it is his car too!
Carsharing is a dead end and whoever will try it, will quickly revert back to his own car. Less headache.
To start off, smoking in the car is not allowed. If they detect dog hair and can deduce who introduced it, the user will be banned. If someone left it with less than either a quarter or a half a tank of fuel, the offender gets reprimanded or ultimately banned. Minor incidents and maintenance items are taken care of on a complaint basis - once a user complains, the company fixes it. Eventually. It's not as bad as you're making it out to be.
Now that I moved away to a place with better quality of life, and little to no traffic having a car is great.
I can go wherever I want whenever I want.
No doubt it's a symbol for freedom for many.
Can't you be satisfied that you achieved what works for you and your family and not strive to implement your will onto the entire planet?
I used to live in the outback without electricity or running water, and no cars around. It was lovely and I'll probably do it again in my life. And that is an option each one of us has. If you're sick of the city and traffic, you can go live in the sticks, where you won't have to breathe the exhaust. You can go live in a tropical island where there are no cars and only walking roads. That's not a fantasy, that's an option that exists right now. I used to live on one as well.
But living away from civilization also requires self-sufficiency – something that everybody had before cars.
"How Much Of The Netherlands Is Below Sea Level?"
https://netherlandsinsiders.com/how-much-of-the-netherlands-...
If I were less risk-averse I'd live there too. But flooding is "Nature's way of telling" me to move.
I love cycling and I love to bike within town and it's great that I can get to nearly all basic needs by bike. I wish there was safe bike parking everywhere though, since the lack of it means I often can't bike there if I can't be sure it won't be stolen.
Still, if you want to advocate for more bike friendly places, calling car use an empty and sad life isn't going to win any converts.
Cars are immensely useful for nearly everyone, so merely banning them and hoping for the best won't work. Policies need to make alternatives attractive, at which point people will pick what's most convenient by themselves, no need to ban anything.
As someone who loves car-less living in big cities like NYC, I think the position above is an ideological belief rather than a practical one.
Every geography and lifestyle has an optimum mode of transportation. In dense urban environments, it would be a heterogeneous mix of public transit for longer distances, scooters or bikes for last mile/yard, and the occasional taxi for groceries or the like.
But for those of us who have active busy lives and need to meet friends, take classes, go to events, etc. across town, our time is maximized by the use of a car if the geography admits it. I used to live in Chicago where you absolutely did not need a car, but a car saves you time, lets you explore more parts of the city, and lets you pack more activities in 5 work nights than if you had to rely on public transit and transfers between different lines.
There is very little outdoor/nature activity accessible to me by public transit.
But if I extend my leash to a 2-3 hour car ride it opens up countless forests, beaches, mountains, ghost towns, lakes, caves, marshes, waterfalls, ...
This way makes it safe to feel the waters, tweak public transports, get people's reaction, without killing it in the cradle.
Easier to start with one big zone over the whole city, and keep making the requirements stricter automatically. Eg. Take the cars age, add the current year, subtract the cars rated mpg, add 10 if it's a diesel. If the result is 2050 or more, there is a fine of $20/day if you drive it.
Good luck getting your average person to not only understand this but being able to actually do the calculations. And it'll be impossible to enforce efficiently.
It can either be enforced at registration renewal (Put a star on the reg plate to indicate they're allowed in the city), or by ANPR cameras on the main roads in/out of the city.
The simplest way forward I think would be to just double the fees for ICE cars, and cutting them for EV's. It would be a software only solution, so cheap-ish. It would only be possible to do for the whole inner city though. Can't do it for half the city.
Meanwhile in NY some people are all up in arms about the congestion toll.
In Boston a certain subset of people are losing their minds at one of our streets going pedestrian only on Saturdays during the summer.
the US really has a crazy relationship with cars
They're obviously going to want cars. Walking & cycling are not options (see sedentary).
Cars are awesome.
The idea that a car is the only lifeline for people with physical disabilities bespeaks broader social ills.
But exceptions to allow those that need it to drive or other services (like grocery delivery) can take care of that while still allowing for a pedestrian focused city.
There is also the fact that if a city is properly designed ideally you may only need to walk a couple blocks for groceries and your basic needs, and instead of doing big shopping you buy just a few things at a time.
Or I just didn't know about it? But I am honestly jealous. Being able to walk, not worry about cars and have plenty of room to not need to weave through slow walkers is amazing. And my health benefits from the extra walking.
Question: does this mean NK are going to have to move their flagship shop if they want any customers in future?
Maps here: <https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/bensin-och-diese...> and here: <https://www.dn.se/sverige/bensin-och-dieselbilar-forbjuds-i-...>. Note that the area is comparatively tiny; 180 000m² according to some articles, closer to 200 000m² according to my measurements – but in any case smaller than 50 acres.
OpenStreetMap link to the same area as the map, so you can zoom out and see the scales involved: <https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/59.33461/18.06944>
> The study found that children who grow up on roads in the capital with particularly high emissions have worse-than-average lung capacity when compared to other children, from as early as six months old.
This will only accelerate the move to the suburbs of the families having children themselves and who can't yet afford an EV, leaving the cities themselves (as I suspect similar moves will be applied elsewhere here in Europe) to young people without kids, to immigrant people with kids but not-interested in having a full Western-life experience (which necessitates having a car) and to the "pied-a-terres" of the few upper-middle class people who will afford to have EVs (who will also own property in the suburbs, for that matter).
First of all, taking your kids by car to a much better school. Because we sure as hell cannot afford to own property close to those better schools.
Try to put your 10-year old kid on public transport half-away across the city in any big European city, especially after the sun is out in the winter.
On what basis?
Sending kids to a different school comes down to personal preferences, ranging from available languages to a school being along the commute of a parent or simple preference of tue kid in question. Selecting where to life based on school quality is simply not a thing I know. I do hear a ton of that from the US so.
That is definitely not the case here in Romania.
One of my personal projects involves mapping the results of Romania's National Exams for pupils at the end of 8th grade (in here [1] are the results for Bucharest), and as you can see on the linked map/link there are definetly better (colored with green, with average school grade higher than the average for Bucharest) and worse schools (colored with red). Going back to 2015, let's say (meaning at this link [2]), one can see that the schools colored green have remained pretty much the same, and the same goes for the red/worst schools.
I have a close friend who's a math highschool teacher in the French Education system and he confirmed to me that a similar situation takes place in France (the Paris area, to be more exact).
Oh, and the best schools are really in the downtown area. Which is why children, kids, teenagers use the public transport from all around the metro area by themselves to get to the schools.
And since you comment further below about winter - yes, of course the kids move around like this in the winter too.
Also, some European countries do a really high effort to make their public schools so good that rich people study in the public centres.
Not kids from age 3-10, and from then on really just a simple one bus or tram route. There's no point pretending this isn't a big issue. You might say it's worth those people leaving the city to make it happen, but saying it's not life-changing for them is doing them a massive disservice.
+ After a while of my mum taking me on the train to London I just asked her to send me on my own where I could get picked up at the other end, it was fine.
Part of living in a free society is that you get to have things that aren't required. IF I want to buy the biggest gas guzzling truck there is, I should have the right to do so since I'll be spending my $80k+ of money on it.
Creating excuses for totalitarianism is fun.
Your silly little metaphor would make sense if it was actually about how it "affected others". It's clearly not for the reasons I explained above.
The freedom to impose on other people's freedom is a funny one.
You seem to think "If you're so worried about climate change why do you participate in _____" is some kind of gotcha winning card to play in any climate-related argument. Taken to its logical, absurd conclusion, anyone that doesn't kill themselves immediately is equally responsible for climate change as someone emitting millions of tons of carbon a year.
You lack wisdom. You don't debate in good faith.
This is just not accurate.
American life experience, you mean? It's totally OK to live in Stockholm, as well as in many other cities in Europe, without a car. Besides, you make it sound like EVs are more expensive than ICE cars. They surely are, but the difference is not that much and subsidies cover a part of it.
And/or having a car is too expensive for some so people make do..
Glad you both agree!
Not really. You can usually (sort of) take public transport to commute into the centre, but try to do anything else and the model falls apart quickly.
So I guess the process was already under way, as it already is too expensive to have a typical Western life in downtown-ish Stockholm. I fail to see how moves like this one would help with those expenses.
yeah, that's great but.. Modern engines are already pretty "clean", significant proportion (if not the majority?) of PM 2.5 and PM 0.1 particles come from breaks and tires so EV are not really the solution for inner city pollution.
(and the effect on CO2 emissions is immaterial in this case)
2) For the record EV use 99% regenerative braking so at least that source is practically zero
3) Decoupling CO2 emissions from the car means you can upgrade your power grid to be greener without having to replace all the cars already circulating. It's an enormous advantage which should be given due consideration. Also, it's easier to manage the emission of all the CO2 in one place, and mandate better filters/capture systems there, than just spew it out of every individual exhaust pipe, where many capture systems are not feasible due to cost, size or other consideration.
But, most importantly, let me repeat:
Really, really, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, please.
99% or "practically zero" are hugely overexaggerated claims but yes it's an improvement
> Really, really, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, please.
That's an awful reason to not talk about something. Yes it's an improvement but switching to EVs won't magically eliminate car related pollution in cities (not even remotely close to that) which is something some people seem to believe (and they really shouldn't)
A lot of cars support "one-pedal driving" where only regenerative braking is used. The brake pedal is literally just used in case of emergencies. As this becomes the default on more models, yes, I fully expect we will achieve that "practically zero".
I'm wondering what can be done for the tires (not just for EVs, also for ICEs and especially for heavier vehicles), where I think tire manufacturers ultimately have the opposite incentive (if your tires shed more material, they have to be replaced sooner, which increases their recurring revenues, so maybe they didn't spend too much R&D in that direction....)
> That's an awful reason to not talk about something. Yes it's an improvement but switching to EVs won't magically eliminate car related pollution in cities (not even remotely close to that) which is something some people seem to believe (and they really shouldn't)
I really have to disagree here. EVs are silent (so silent they had to be fitted with a noisemaker to make them more detectable by pedestrians), they don't pollute the air with combustion products make the air terrible (some of this pollution is happening elsewhere when fossil fuels are used - that's on a downward trend and I want to argue it's still a net win, not happening right next to where a lot of people breathe), they produce "practically zero" (yeah I insist) PM2.5 - PM1.0 particles from braking, there is almost only tire wear pollution.
It may not be perfect, but it's a pretty strong improvement in quality of life compared to the actual situation - have you "tasted" the air in Paris on a busy winter evening while walking through the city? It's awful. In the future we will look at this stuff like we are finally starting to look at cigarette smoke. And the noise... just terrible.
Do you have a better proposal which can be realistically (yeah banning all cars ain't gonna cut it, people won't, and will vote out politicians who try) applied to the situation, with results available on the same timescale of the EV transition - which is already happening by itself? If yes, let us know, and let's discussing moving all the EV incentives towards your better solution.
You're right of course that not having a car self-evidently limits the things you can do (yes even in your country that has flawless transit that is free and goes "everywhere"), and is even worse if you have children. Want to go to the country to relax? You're limited to the places you can get by transit. Kid wants to do something that isn't near a transit stop? Too bad. Visiting relatives outside the city? Better hope you can get a ride from the nearest transit stop. The list goes on and on.
Being able to walk places is desirable, but it's best when you can walk/bike and drive a car if you need to.
“You will wear this belt because we say so. You have no freedom.”
If _they_ don’t want you to go somewhere, your car surely won’t take you there.
Wait, what's this "Western-life experience" I'm missing out on by not having a car? Having lived in Western Europe all my life, I seem to have missed the memo about this.
The latter seem to have been designed and sold mainly to skirt some regulations and take advantage of subsidies; along with a sometimes-hefty price increase.
We also own a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and while it's a fine SUV and family mover, it uses the ICE constantly, while I drive my Volt for months without ever using the combustion engine (to the point where it has to run a "maintenance cycle" to stop the gas from going bad).
Meanwhile the Volt was killed off by GM. It's a shame because I feel like consumers would have responded more positively to electrification if more cars like this had been rolled out and the engineering (and marketing and sales) had been taken more seriously on them.
Whereas GM rolled out the Volt across all their dealerships everywhere -- though obviously sales only really happened in places with incentives.
Technically on paper the Clarity PHEV looks on par with the Volt; but Honda didn't really want to sell it ... and GM killed the Volt. So that category of vehicle (range assisted EV instead of "PHEV") seems DOA.
I went there a few weeks ago for the first time in 6 years or so and could easily identify positive changes that make living there more pleasant.
Also while driving was a little slow (as usual), I had no problem finding (paid) parking close to the old town.
To add more context: "The first phase of the Krakow LEZ will restrict vehicles with EU exhaust emission standards Euro 1 petrol and Euro 2 diesel vehicles, before tightening restrictions further in 2026. After then, only cars with a minimum norm Euro 3 for petrol and Euro 5 for diesel will be allowed in the city (20% of the current fleet will be affected). "
[0] https://www.designboom.com/technology/device-captures-harmfu...
I guess they will either shutdown or get an exemption somehow.
Of course we can just ignore that which is not at all crazy...
Edit: I'm certainly not using this as argument to not ban ICE vehicles in city centers. However switching to EVs is not a good longterm solution. e.g. there won't be any incentives for massively increasing investment into public transport because everyone can just drive a "clean" EV.
*I'm not saying that brake and tire wear is that much higher for EVs, rather that if we only look at ICE vehicles tires/breaks are as big a source of PM 2.5 as the engine itself.
Of course, cars are generally too big, too heavy, and too fast. Addressing those issues would benefit everyone, regardless of fuel source.
There are a lot of people who are driving an EV with several hundred miles of range to work less than 20 miles away. That extra order of magnitude of battery capacity is a lot of extra weight. Imagine I’d you could instead rent a battery trailer for those occasional long trips?
I think e-bikes are the way to go, tho perhaps we can define a new and smaller class of vehicles with cabins and/or inherent stability for those unable to ride.
All cars need to get smaller again, EVs should have automatic charging when parked and when waiting in traffic jams.
EVs are not the solution but they are a stop gap.
The smaller and lighter vehicles you all are trying to invent, already exist in the hundreds of millions! And have existed for almost as long as cars. They are cheap to buy, cheap to ride, release very little exhaust, doesn't need decaying batteries or rare-earth minerals to make, won't run over your kids and won't make traffic jams.
Also they can get you to where you're going faster than any EV or SUV.
They're called motorcycles.
Edit: Not to mention that electric motorcycles are great rides.
As for the tire emissions, you are likely quoting the worst case scenario that was devised by emissionsanalytics. The reality is, that was a worst case scenario, if you actually saw tire wear that was significantly more polluting than traditional cars you would have tires that go bald in a very short period of time.
For example, the Micheline Pilot Sport all seasons that come on the Tesla Model 3 are rated for 45k miles, but typically get around 35-40k miles depending on driving habits. That is only 13-26% more tread loss depending on driving style. So how is it possible the tires are losing significantly more tread (and as a consequence, polluting more) but also lasting a long time?
Sorry, I probably phrased it in a confusing way, I was comparing the ratio between tire/brake and ICE PM 2.5 emissions for normal cars not saying that EVs are that much worse (the part about weight is just speculation).
You might want to cross that off your list of things to complain about when talking about EVs.
Car companies can tune the EVs to damp torque spikes, but there's no way around the fundamental fact that hard acceleration uses up tires. EVs accelerate hard, but they don't have to. That just happens to be a major selling point for most of them.
AWD works in their favor here though, since it's distributing the torque across four wheels, and traction control on EVs can be incredibly effective.
I'd be surprised if people in Model 3 Performances went through tires at nearly the rate that I do in similarly powerful ICE cars (~8-10k for driven wheels).
The USA has a weird cultural obsession with being able to break certain laws. We need to rethink that. If we aren't enforcing laws, then we need to get rid of them, if we don't want to get rid of them, then we need to enforce them.
EVs use primarily regen for braking, so they contribute almost no brake wear. And that isn't even a problem.
It matters what is emitted. Tire wear particles are relatively large, and don't stay in the air.
Anti-EV disinformation uses the trick of counting pollution by weight, which completely discounts gaseous emissions, which is the real pollution that people breathe in.
This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Another (expensive) solution would be carbon ceramic brakes. These used to be for "race cars" but people found that they are too expensive to replace if you track the car, so people use iron brakes on the track, and carbon ceramics on the street. Carbon ceramics will last 100k+ miles under normal street use and they keep the wheels free of brake dust.
Personally I don't really care since I don't live in Stockholm anymore but that city is very hostile against car traffic in general (which is stupid in my opinion). Finding a parking space in the outskirts of the city is very hard and I have searched for a spot in like an hour when visiting my family. They build a lot of housing but no parking spaces for residents. Sometimes if you're lucky they'll build like 1 parking space per 20 residents when in reality 19 of these residents have a car. I know personally some areas close to my mother where they have taken areas for parking and built housing there making the actual parking spaces go negative.
Fine if you want to get rid of petrol/diesel but there are alternatives and you don't have to make things shitty for people with electric cars as well.
I think people will start moving from Stockholm because who wants to live in a city where housing is 3-4 times the national avg, people being shot all the time and even blown up when in bed in your own home. Then the politicians responsible cares more about making it more expensive for you to go to work which all seems more meaningless since you pay so much in taxes that goes to immigration and people not contributing to society.
Productive will move to the country side where they can safely drive to work and work less because working hard is just not worth it in Sweden.
> While it is primarily intended to allow for only fully electric cars, bigger vans with plug-in hybrid engines will also be allowed, and exceptions will be made for ambulances and police cars, as well as cars in which the driver or passenger has a documented disability
I have nothing against EVs, in fact the opposite. But it's not the EVs that is the main issue with Stockholm. It's that you don't feel safe travelling in the public transport anymore and they are doing basically nothing to combat it.
Delivery vehicles are usually larger than a carpenter's, and are already electrifying most places.
> that will also force everyone to buy new cars
"Everyone" meaning, laborers servicing that area? Strange definition of "everyone".
It is an emotional decision. Politics is all about emotionalism. Now everybody that like or work there will need to have buy a te$la or pole$tar.
Most people I know at work own a car, but no one drives to work. Why would they?
Seems like people driving in downtown Stockholm are the kind of people that can afford EVs anyway. (Of course, disabled people etc. But they are also covered by the new rules.)
I guess time will tell, but if you look at statistics many country side smaller cities are growing when in the past they were shrinking for a really long time. The wind is vänding.
It's like these people live in a parallel reality where nobody needs to get in our out of the inner city.
Maybe it looks brilliant if you're used to some US shithole. But even at its best it can't hold a candle to somewhere like the Copenhagen metro. And even that pales when compared to the trusty car that will take you from anywhere, to anywhere, whenever you want.
Source: lived in Stockholm for 8 years so far, half of which were carless.
I love how cars are entitled to every inch of the city.
Whereas the reality is that these actions are preplanned internationally and designed (by opaque agencies such the club of Rome and the UN) in order for individuals to have less control over their lives - shifting that control to the governance structure. Did anyone discuss the transfer of control, agree to it, vote on it?
It's quite amazing to me that people are going to lose freedom of movement, will pay more etc and be happy to do so. Turkeys voting for Christmas.
It also masks the effects of inefficient decisionmaking.
Of course they are not, and trusting the government to do the right thing isn't too bad a position neither. After, we vote for them.
This isn't what "freedom of movement" means.
It's probably a self-fulfilling expectation: the government can't be effective without trust. Without support, it can't pass strong regulations that make a difference. So you get an ineffective government, and watered-down lobbied laws that easily fall to regulatory capture, and you can say "told you so!"
Not everyone is happy with this change, if that makes you feel better.
Also, this is implemented by the city, by real people (yes, politicians are people) that Stockholmers voted for.
Political class as a concept doesn't make much sense in Sweden, just FYI.