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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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What about just not buying cars? The most environmentally freindly countries are apparently does that just cant afford the western way of life. Why cant we have walfare, social security, etc while having good urbanism and low car usage?
Sweden and Norway have quite low population densities, and Norway especially is very difficult in terms of building infrastructure. Fjords and mountains are beautiful, but they're a nightmare to build any kind of infrastructure for. So it will be a lot of dirt roads, sharp turns et.c. and not suitable for rail.
That being said, urban centers should likely be almost entirely car-free.
Yeah but like 60% of the population is in large urban centers and theyre already connected in norway by huge road tunnels and bridges, they could have trains as well. As for sweden, the government just doesnt spend money on public transit and when it does they throw it away on random stuff. Many tracks are in disrepair, out of use and the main high speed lines are constructed in stupid places. There are like 2 population corridors that make up 50% of swedens total population, thats three good highspeed lines to connect them but even that isnt achieved in a reliable way. As for transport within cities, apart from gothenburg and stockholm its pretty bad as well.
It's not better in Norway. There's always something wrong with the trains. There's been abysmal punctuality or cancellation numbers that would make even German train operators blush. They're on partial strike at the moment and although there are many cancellations I hardly notice any difference between a planned disruption by strike and an unplanned disruption by mismanagement.
And biking in urban centers is near suicide. The Norwegian Cyclists' Association recently published their biannual questionnaire results and only 18% think that cycling is "generally save across all age and experience groups".
Let's not underestimate the costs of building rail. You're always going to have roads first, because ambulances don't go on rail. So that's not optional. Rail is an addition, and you do have to factor in a lot to figure out if it's really worth it (including environmentally). And if you need to literally make a tunnel or a bridge to add a train, like you do in most of Norway, it's not really going to work.
Within urban centers however I do agree that rail is a good complement to good bicycle lanes, and it is a fact that deregulation and underinvestment in rail over the past 40 years really is hitting Sweden hard. Unfortunately the people who are in charge of public transit have never gone anywhere by bus, so they're clueless of what to do.
Have you lived in Norway? It's a low density country and also very cold a lot of the year. You're not cycling around for a lot of journeys.
Brother, i live in sweden. Also people all over the nordics cycle. A lot of people cycle in coppenhagen for example. Same in stockholm tho id argue that weather in stockholm is actually legit better than coppenhagen even tho its quite a bit more northern. Also ive been on cycling holidays to norway. So no, its not too cold for cycling.
Copenhagen is about the same latitude as north England or Ireland. It's not mountainous and fairly warm. It's great for cycling, especially with the water buses. (I really like Copenhagen)
Norway is rather different on the whole. Outside of Oslo or the larger towns I doubt you'd see as much, especially as you go north.
As someone living in Norway, Norway could do a lot more to be less car-centric. It could also do a lot less, that's true, it's not nearly as bad as other places, but I would like to see a lot more drastic changes to reduce or eliminate cars, especially in urban areas