Also; it is not a residential area. There are mostly office buildings and shopping centers there. It will require delivery trucks to be at least hybrids.
> 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).
> not-interested in having a full Western-life experience (which necessitates having a car)
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.
Interesting, can you elaborate? What part of the city or surrounds do you find this to be true? I've found the reliability and mix of routes via tunnelbana, pendeltåg, trams, buses, and boats to be really good and know many Stockholmers without cars. Of course, road trips and moving large items become more of a hassle without a car, but can often be worked around with rentals/delivery srevices. Further, the more remote you get, the density of public transport options do become sparse, if an option at all. But within the radius of the tunnelbana, living without a car is very achievable. [edit: saw your other comment about further out areas, late night journeys and MTR, which are fair points. Cars are super convenient in many ways, no argument there.]
I've lived in central Stockholm for 10 years with kids, it's amazing, but perhaps not for everyone. I also lived the car dependent life in the US and it made me mildly depressed.
Why is what's "required" a consideration? Almost nothing in modern life is required. You don't need AC, heat, refrigeration, video games, movies etc. NONE of that is a requirement and it all contributes to climate change.
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.
This feels like a weird thing to have to explain to someone, but like, the whole purpose of government and regulations is to provide a framework to peacefully resolve conflicts when one person's decisions affect another person. It's kind of how civilization works, you know? Your decision to drive a battletank on public roads affects more than just yourself.
You're free to do so if you also buy your own exclusive air supply that never touches our air. And never drive on public roads that everyone else pays for and uses - because then you are contributing to road wear and higher accident rates. Otherwise the rest of us retain the right to put limits on your "freedom".
Ah yes because sounding like you're casting a Harry Potter spell is a good rebuttal. You could have just admitted you got caught swimming in cognitive dissonance.
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.
The people placing power in the hands of representatives through democratic elections, choosing not to have the biggest gas guzzling trucks on their inner city streets.
You have obviously not been to Stockholm during morning rush. Stockholm have an extensive subway, as well as buses. Or just using the (often quite wide) sidewalks to walk. The amount of kids moving around (themselves) to get to their schools is almost overwhelming.
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.
Yeah, seeing 7 year olds taking the subway with their parents, just to change two stations later like any other commuter, is always a fun and cool thing to see.
I take my 6 year old on the train all the time a few stops living in London and have since she was much smaller whats wrong with kids on trains (small children are keen on trains and buses btw).
Back the dqy, my parenrs had 1 hour commutes on foot through some woods to catch a bus for another hour to go to school, and back. Nobody cared, it was normal. Now it is normal for kids to take busses and trains themselves to go to school in cities. Times change.
> Most kids know how to use the public transportation
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.
I can assure you that somewhere around the 6-7 year mark, it is completely normal for kids to take public transport to go to school. It is where I live, it is in Munich (always fun to end up in the school rush hour sharing the subway with all those little ones riding the train like a pro). It is simply normal for those and nothing even remotely special or weird.
The UK is weird about kids. In the 80s I started travelling as a young kid to school on the bus on my own but it's less common now.
+ 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.
Next time you are in Munich, take public transport of any kind between 7 and 7:30 in the morning on a normal school day, there are sometimes morw school kids of all ages in a given subway car than adults. Pretty funny to witness, seeing the little ones behaving like all the adult commuters, head phones and all until they meet their friends.
I started taking the bus to school from first grade, as did most of my classmates. I'd usually meet a couple of them on the bus and we used to time to copy homework :)
What are the much better schools in the center of Stockholm that you're thinking of?
I think the level of education is really good in most Swedish schools, so if you want one that's farther away for reasons... electric car or public transport
A lot private schools in the US don't offer transportation services. Many school districts in the US won't do transportation if you're trying to go to any school that you're not originally zoned for. So if you want to send your kids to a nicer private school or if the school you're zoned for is trash, you're in charge of getting them to school.
You mean like basically all kids in Munich do, just as an example? Regarding this "better school" thing, that seems to be an almost exclusive US problem.
That all the public schools I know in Europe, either directly or indirectly, are pretty much of the same quality (differences for specific teachers not withstanding).
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 all the public schools I know in Europe, either directly or indirectly, are pretty much of the same quality
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).
By doing a very detailed due dilligence of schools in Bavaria, the rest of Germany, Austria, France and Sweden, using the most advanced data science methodologies, including all available for money social studies as summarized by Chat-GPT (which reminds to run that again now that version 4 is out) and having the results put into a picture drawn by Dall-E and vetted by the social science PhD I met as my taxi driver (I don't take Ubers).
Generally people with children dont live in the center of Stockholm and a high % already drive electric. Biggest change is that delivery/transport services have to find alternatives and Im really happy about that, everyone benifit from removing "heavy loud polluting traffic" in the city.
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.
> For the record EV use 99% regenerative braking so at least that source is practically zero
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)
> 99% or "practically zero" are hugely overexaggerated claims but yes it's an improvement
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.
> Generally people with children dont live in the center of Stockholm and a high % already drive electri
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.
So, Stockholm is a modern vity, O hope we can agree on that. Also, Sweden, and thus Stockholm, is in the West, making Stockholm a modern, western city. And it seems people in Stockholm are not living in abysmal conditions. Meaning everyone living in Stockholm right now is living a "modern, western lifestyle", by definition. It is, of course, an urban one, but there are more ways than one living ypur life. And nobody is trying to take that away from you or anyone else.
> not-interested in having a full Western-life experience (which necessitates having a car)
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.
Unfortunately, in my experience, to people who are concerned about “immigrant people with kids but not-interested in having a full Western-life experience (which necessitates having a car)”, this is what counts as a logical complaint.
I'm already seeing that flight to the suburbs happening here in Bucharest, yes. And, yes, the most recent census has confirmed that flight to the suburbs, that is for your "non-evidence rant" part of your comment.
I don't think this deserves to be downvoted. Alas the "you'll own nothing and you'll like it" / "you'll go where we say according to our schedules and you'll like it" crowd is strong here.
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.
In some countries, every single house or business is either walking distance from a transit stop, or for the few exceptions there is a taxpayer funded 'bus' service that operates like a taxi.
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>