Starting in 2019, Oslo Will Restrict the Use of Vehicles in its City Center (nytimes.com) 159
If you drive a car into the city center of Oslo next month, you shouldn't plan on staying long: There won't be any parking spots. The Norwegian capital is in the process of eliminating the remaining 700 street parking spots in its city center by the end of 2018 as part of its plan to turn the area into a car-free zone. From a report: "We're doing this to give the streets back to the people," Hanna Elise Marcussen, Oslo's vice mayor for urban development, said during a recent phone interview. "And of course, it's environmentally friendly." (The Scandinavian country, recently recognized as one of the world's most ecologically progressive nations, has plans to become carbon neutral by 2030 and halt the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2025.)
[...] In Oslo, the plan to remove cars from the city began in 2015 when a coalition of progressive political parties called for a city center free from vehicles. Similar plans have been met with resistance in places like Dublin, where local officials have proposed expanding that city's pedestrian zone, and Barcelona. Even in ecologically minded Oslo, it wasn't easy. "There's been quite a bit of public date, and there's been quite a lot of controversy, and it's been quite difficult to do this in a way that businesses and citizens can accept," Ms. Marcussen said.
[...] In Oslo, the plan to remove cars from the city began in 2015 when a coalition of progressive political parties called for a city center free from vehicles. Similar plans have been met with resistance in places like Dublin, where local officials have proposed expanding that city's pedestrian zone, and Barcelona. Even in ecologically minded Oslo, it wasn't easy. "There's been quite a bit of public date, and there's been quite a lot of controversy, and it's been quite difficult to do this in a way that businesses and citizens can accept," Ms. Marcussen said.
truly amazing (Score:1)
Less cars where people are walking all the time??? Holy shit!!! Bourbon street does this all the time though
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Hopefully Oslo is different. In the US, a city doing this will wind up just like Austin, SF, and NYC. The Maybach drivers will have parking somewhere. The workers who don't make the 6-7 digits a year will have to deal with a shitty commute, crappy public transportation, and delays, while the city leaders can thump their chests about how "eco" they are.
Take Austin. The city council is doing their damndest to force cars out of the city core, by allowing businesses to build high density residential towers
Fact check (Score:2)
Global warming (Score:2)
and besides, this is norway. don't people ski and snowshoe to work 9 months out of the year?
You mean global warming has gotten that worse that now the time of the year when people are snowed in and can't even leave their homes has shrunken to 3 months only ?
Corporate welfare.. (Score:1, Troll)
Exactly.
It is about restricting the rights of private citizens, and forcing them to use commercial transport instead of what they already have.
A great boost for Taxi services.
Isnt it wonderful when the 'socialists' boost corporate welfare through regulatory capture in the name of the people and environment.. score one for the workers!
I bet the goods delivery parks, taxi stands, and private commercial carparks are not being removed...
Those middle class who bother to own a car, and paid for the roads truly ar
Re: Corporate welfare.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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We all have legs. Only some have cars.
Some people don't have them and others can't use theirs. At least with a car you can save up to buy one. Can't do that with legs.
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I know someone who lost his legs. Yes he did save up and buy a pair and watching him walk, you'd never guess that he has artificial legs.
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Are you saying wheelchairs and crutches don't need to exist then? Because GP's point is that a pedestrian-only area is more accommodating than an area with both cars and pedestrians.
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Probably took GP's point wrong then. Easy enough to do in an all text world.
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"Driving is not a right, driving is a privilege"
bullshit propaganda. fuck the government and fuck you. justice is coming for these socialist scum that think every human activity needs to have a license.
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The theory is usually 'public transport'.
It sort of works if the public transport isn't pathetic. Don't know what Oslo's public transport is like, but I know my local politicians (completely different country, different part of the world) think our pathetic public transport is somehow acceptable.
(no, I don't want to spend 1h20 on a bus twice a day when I could spend 20 minutes in a car each way...)
Manufacturing transit support by annoying riders (Score:3, Insightful)
I think some of the logic of the anti-car urban factions in urban areas with poor public transit is:
1: Make driving a car difficult through reduced parking, more expensive parking, and street closures which worsen auto traffic
2: This forces drivers onto public transit.
3: The low quality public transit as the only alternative creates political pressure for better transit
It's a risky gambit, because public transit can't be made superior overnight. Really good subways and trains are the result of either lega
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It's a risky gambit, because public transit can't be made superior overnight
Public transit can be made significantly better immediately, by making buses frequent rather than infrequent. Once that is done, it can be made significantly better once again by painting bus-only lanes on the street - which makes buses faster and cars possibly slower, leading to more bus ridership, a virtuous cycle. It works great if you can get the political willpower to take away a car lane.
Really good subways and trains are the result of either legacy dumb luck from 100 years ago or once-in-a-millennium rebuilding due to war or other catastrophe.
All it takes is a steady building program over a couple decades. NYC's subway was almost entirely build between 190
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You can make buses more efficient without even increasing the number of buses by simply restricting where they will stop, say every 5 blocks vs. every block. This forces an extra 2 block walk, max, for every commuter.
Increasing buses definitely helps, but it's also expensive in terms of capital investment and fuel consumption.
Building subways was significantly easier 1900-1930 as they could use more intrusive construction like trench excavation and labor costs were a lot lower, in addition to lower costs f
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Don't forget the commuting enables labor mobility which is a massive boost to economic productivity. It'd be great if there was no commuting but you either need to have reduced labor mobility (ie, keeping less productive people in jobs) or greatly increased housing liquidity so people can move if they change jobs.
Socialist idiots make poor choices. (Score:1)
Not allowing vehicles is not the answer.
Norway is a socialist mess, and stuff like this is WHY it's a mess.
$1000 says that politicians will be granted an exemption and thus be able to use vehicles where other people are not permitted to do so.
Re: Socialist idiots make poor choices. (Score:5, Informative)
As a Norwegian: do you mind explaining why our country is a mess? Most people here seem quite satisfied, please explain why we shouldn't be.
Re:Commuting vs plan economy (Score:2)
The problem is that Oslo is:
1. Central administration of Norway, bringing a lot of jobs, boolstering its size and economy
2. A small county in size, meaning there is limited place
3. Various centralization policies have lead to every single national company setting up HQ in Oslo, again making its economy bigger. This has been going on since the railroad and phone lines where properly expanded.
4. Oslo has retained its original "city borders".
So if you combine this, and get cynical you could argue Oslo stretche
If Norway wants to be environmentally friendly (Score:2, Insightful)
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Because they are paying for their environmentally friendly nation by selling fossil fuels to other countries.
So? What would your prefer they spend their fossil fuel money on?
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No it's the stunning level of hypocrisy when a country seeks to eliminate car traffic stating that it helps the environment but then turns around and funds the entire government by fossil fuel production. A true environmental supporter would demand their country divests from any industry that produces fossil fuels. They would stop using a personal car for any travel. They would buy only products manufactured in their country to cut down on the damage created by using fossil fuel powered oceanic shipping
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Great advice. Of course that doesn't change anything about this decision in Oslo, why are you bringing it up except as a whattabout-distraction? I don't see how this is a threat to Putin or his local affiliate, why the red herring?
Firstly you can untwist your panties because there is no way Norway will stop selling oil, especially while it is being ruled by a bunch of right wing parties. Secondly, WTF does Putin have to do with any of this?
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Re:If Norway wants to be environmentally friendly (Score:5, Insightful)
The oil/pension fund is investing more abroad than it does in Norway's own population.
That is the whole point of the fund. Norway has a small population and a small economy. An influx of that much capital would quickly result in the Dutch Disease [wikipedia.org] of high inflation and economic strangulation of other industries.
This is what happened to Australia during the commodity boom of the 00s, before they set up the Australian Future Fund [wikipedia.org] to prevent a recurrence.
Norway is doing the right thing by investing their windwall worldwide, and only repatriating the wealth at a rate that their economy can effectively absorb.
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Yes, it is like the Mafia banning gambling in their headquarters. But only for lower echelons without chauffeurs.
Re:If Norway wants to be environmentally friendly (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop pumping oil and gas out of the North Sea.
No that would make it worse. Not pumping oil from the north sea would not change the consumption of oil around the world one bit. What it would do is funnel money from Norway's coffers into those of privately run oil and gas majors.
Norways is investing in green energy. Are the Koch brothers?
Goods (Score:1)
How will goods be brought into the city without the use of vehicles? Will they use pack mules? It sounds like a good idea, but all the businesses which provide jobs will have no way to bring in food, and retail merchandise.
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They banned cars on the main restaurant/bar strip in my city, now you can't buy a condo down there for less than a mil, so I guess results vary...
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I’m not a Republican. It is a legitimate question. If they block off the roads to automobiles but allow trucks that seems like it would still make the roads dangerous for bicycles and it would still need to be kept for vehicles. I can’t RTFA because it’s paywalled and I can’t find any other article that explains how they will handle it. A city center with no restaurants or shops sounds awful.
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Think of a redesigned city with similar high rise buildings ie retail on the first few floors and then commercial on the next bunch of floors and then capped off be residential. So often you don't even need to leave your building and often what you need is in the building across the street and you are free to walk there. This does not support suburbia in the least because of the distributed source of the traffic, prevents better public transport options, until further development in tunnelling allows an aut
Re:TRY READING, REPUBLICAN MORONS (Score:5, Interesting)
Most European cities have a street or a whole district which is already like this. Severely limited to cars, but delivery trucks can visit when needed (generally very early in the morning). These are usually the most popular and touristy streets in the cities, with lots of restaurants and shopping and bars on the ground floor, and apartments in the 3-6 stories above the shops. Not many delivery trucks are needed for a store, and if they drive carefully at 5mph down the street they are not much of a danger when they do arrive.
Re:Goods (Score:5, Insightful)
How will goods be brought into the city without the use of vehicles?
Try reading. The trucks will have an easier time making deliveries with fewer cars choking the roads.
Anyone who has driven in central Oslo will know this is an experience not to be missed. Nobody will ever miss it.
Since the billion-dollar Bjørvika tunnel opened in 2010, there is not much reason to even drive through Oslo.
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The summary says they will ban vehicles. You are saying they are banning cars. Perhaps the paywalled article clarifies this. I must say though trucks and bicycles sounds like a bad mix. I’m not sure how it’s a huge improvement.
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The only concrete fact is that they are eliminating street parking. There are still plenty of multi-storey P-hus .
There is a vague "plan to turn the area into a car-free zone" one day. Not a ban of all vehicles.
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The only concrete fact is that they are eliminating street parking.
Right, and this will open up another lane's worth of space on the street, allowing more space for bikers, taxis and handicap vehicles.
This is more important than in the US, because most European cities weren't designed, but evolved over more than a thousand years. Not only are the streets generally narrower, but square four-way intersections are generally the exception and not the rule. And what I remember from Oslo was that even more of many inner city streets had trams, making parking difficult already.
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No, it doesn't. Read it again.
No parking spots (Score:2)
I can't wait for autonomous vehicles. Get out of your car and just have it circle the block for an hour or so until you are ready to go.
Don't most folks go to work at the same time? (Score:2)
Autonomous carpooling (Score:2)
How do you build a society around the idea that our cars are idle if they're all idle at (roughly) the same time?
Autonomous carpooling. Take it one step further and you end up with autonomous fixed route bus service.
Doesn't that mean you're stuck waiting around (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I really, really want a world where I don't have to own a car. I hate the damn things. I'm just not sure if this'll work.
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That obviously depends how you design the bus routes.
Sometimes bus routes are explicitly designed to take detours to pick up as many people as possible.
But in other cities they are only supposed to bring you to the next bigger bus terminal or next subway.
I'm just not sure if this'll work.
There are plenty of cities that have a very small core, or are like Berlin, a few dozen if not a hundred small old towns with their own city center, grown together.
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What do you suggest as an alternative? Make them open topped and have the passengers get on by some kind of trapeze?
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Also one of the major things that makes buses suck is all the stops.
But that's my main form of entertainment while commuting. Watching the driver and some homeless guy screaming at each other because he wants to load his whole shopping cart on the bus.
Re:Don't most folks go to work at the same time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not everyone goes to work at *exactly* the same time. If the average autonomous car drives just two people to work each day, one at 7am and one at 8am, then you've eliminated half the cars that a city needs for commuting. Naturally, autonomous cars outside the peak hour (like an hour before or after the peak) would be much cheaper (since the marginal cost of another ride is low) which would provide a strong incentive for workers to spread out their commuting times a bit.
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If the average autonomous car drives just two people to work each day
You assume that autonomous cars will be a public resource. That may very well be incorrect. Autonomous in that I can sent it off to run errands or go find a parking spot, yes. And safer in that I can read the news while it drives me about. But if you thing I'm sharing my autonomous Bently with some filthy hobo, think again.
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You won't, but a lot of people will. Just like they nowadays share taxis and Ubers.
Bentleys are and always will be a very small part of the traffic volume (because few people can afford them), thus not much of an influence on overall trends.
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where one bus is capable of replacing 50 cars.
Don't mind me while I struggle down the bus aisle with a briefcase, camera case, gym bag and my match rifle and ammo.
No-one goes to Oslo anymore, it's too crowded (Score:3)
As much as it might kind of stink day to day for the people that live there, I can see a number of very popular tourist cities forgoing parking.
That way you can handle a lot more tourists walking around a larger area - better for shops, and even better for tourists until the sheer mass of extra tourist this allows for starts to clog up things like all the good restaurants... but then more will open up if there are people enough to support them.
I think it will be pretty interesting to see how this goes, Oslo was a very nice place and I had wanted to return there someday anyway as my visit there was all too brief. If you do go the Viking museum is nice, but I honestly liked the Fram museum even more for the more technological angle and spirit of exploration. Awesome ship.
There probably is a bus (Score:2)
I took a ferry to the Fram, pretty sure that was free - if you are getting rid of parking that probably does mean free shuttles around the city and to parking on the outskirts. Even if not though, it would still be cheaper than parking in most cities...
As for the disabled person, maybe they will still be able to park with a valid handicapped tag - or maybe they will just have to rely on special accommodations.
But It's not like the city center of Oslo has much besides tourist shops anyway. If they are goin
Finally (Score:3, Informative)
We’be been doing that for forty years in the Netherlands and finally other countries see the light.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Err sorry but no. All the major cities in the Netherlands have parking in the inner city district. One of your "newest" cities was built from the ground up with car transportation in mind.
Don't get me wrong The Netherlands has other great initiatives to dissuade people from driving a car. The fact that it driving to my city centre takes me 19 minutes, catching a metro takes 23minutes, and cycling takes 22minutes, and the parking in the city centre would quickly bankrupt me is a good start. But driving right into the middle of most cities is still very much an option.
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A lot of us drive EVs. About 50% of new cars sold are EVs.