The question to ask is, why are there less cars?

Public transport. As an example, just the tram network had 57 million trips in 2019. The metro, 90+ million trips annually. The commuter rail network? 70+ million. (Source: wikipedia)

So yes. Urban planning has a hand or two in it.

How people in Helsinki get to work: Car: 23% ; PublicTransport: 47% ; Walk: 12% ; Bike: 15%

How pupils in Helsinki get to school: Car: 7% ; PublicTransport: 32% ; Walk: 45% ; Bike: 14%

source: https://www.hel.fi/static/liitteet/kaupunkiymparisto/julkais...

I completely agree. Though implementing it is far easier said than done.

Here in San Francisco (and much of California), things are incredibly complicated.

Take this example: in SF, there’s a policy that prevents kids from attending elementary school in their own neighborhoods. Instead, they’re assigned to schools on the opposite side of town. In places that are practically inaccessible without a car. And there are no school buses.

Changing that policy has proven nearly impossible. But if kids could actually attend local schools, biking or walking would be realistic options. That one shift alone could make a huge difference in reducing car dependence.

What kind of policy is that based on? Seems very counter intuitive, aren't are supposed to meet your classmates after school?

It was a decision intended to foster racial and socioeconomic diversity, adopted in 2020[1]. It will likely be reversed in the 2026/2027 school year[2]

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WxAVUXfKCdhSlFa8rYZqTBC-Zmz...

[2] https://www.sfusd.edu/schools/enroll/student-assignment-poli...

The key of the new proposal is how they are going to define zones (neighbourhoods). Knowing the politics in SF, I think they will probably say that zone is 7-miles radius (and SF is 49 square miles).

The lottery has been around since way before 2020, I believe. You do get preferential assignment to one school close to you. Most schools can take in all the kids that have this neighborhood preference but I believe there are a couple that don’t. (This is for Kindergarten, TK is more of a mess).

I wonder if future centuries will look at the current obsession with diversity (tbh the peak is visibly behind us) the same way that we look at the ancient Egyptians collecting amulets with holy dung beetles: an utterly incomprehensible ritual.

Essentially, this was the cheapest solution for our “limousine liberals” to address the problem of racial and economic segregation in San Francisco’s public schools. The idea was simple: since schools in areas like Hunter’s Point struggle, while those in neighborhoods like the Sunset perform well, the district decided to send students from Hunter’s Point to Sunset schools, and vice versa in order to “balance” outcomes.

But in practice, it backfired. Most families in the Sunset opted out: either by enrolling their children in private schools or moving out of city. The policy didn’t create meaningful integration; it just hollowed out neighborhood public schools and made traffic worse.

A striking example: St. Ignatius Catholic school located on Sunset Boulevard is now undergoing a $200 million campus expansion, while SFUSD is closing public schools due to declining enrollment.

It insane to me that anyone, let alone enough people to actually make it happen, would think that was a good policy. It's bussing, but without the busses.

There's a striking lack of accountability in politics. You don't really need evidence that a policy is going to accomplish it's stated goals, you just need the monkey brain narrative to resonate with voters (and the other elements of the political apparatus)

In the Nordics almost everything that gets passed as law has been thorough studies of impact and consequence first. Takes a long time but means the law has a chance of actually having the intended effect.

Ha, if only!

It's true systematic research on public interventions has historically been valued highly. The Campbell collaboration, Cochrane's sister project dedicated to public policy interventions, is based in Oslo.

But when some politicians wanted to praise and fund "centers of scientific excellence", it overwhelmingly went to the sort of high prestige research you'd expect, like neuroscience and AI. Politicians don't like being told what to do. Especially when the policies with scientific support from controlled studies are unpopular, as they often are (arguably, the study of public interventions against high alcohol consumption was how the Nordic's love of controlled studies in public policy came from).

Even uncontroversial things are decaying. Professor Dan Olweus, through controlled interventions, developed an intervention against bullying in schools in the late eighties. He pushed hard to get them implemented, and pushed back hard against "vibe coded" antisocial behavior prevention programs that didn't have experimental evidence. Bullying went down. But he died in 2020, and guess what, bullying is up again. Keeping government social interventions on the evidence-based path is constant, thankless work.

> Essentially, this was the cheapest solution for our “limousine liberals” to address the problem of racial and economic segregation in San Francisco’s public schools

It is frustrating to see this happen when —while it would be more expensive— they could’ve dealt with that by just

Just what?

Stop saying "the city". The city is a faceless opaque blob. It only cares about things people care about because caring about things is good for it.

There are demographics and individuals who work hard to bring these net negative boondoggles into reality and they ought to take blame.

> in SF, there’s a policy that prevents kids from attending elementary school in their own neighborhoods. Instead, they’re assigned to schools on the opposite side of town. In places that are practically inaccessible without a car. And there are no school buses.

Could you explain this policy a little more, or provide some references? I see SFUSD does some sort of matchmaking algorithm for enrollment, so what happens if you select the five (or however many) closest elementary schools? I can imagine a couple reasons why they would institute such a policy, but I’m having trouble finding documentation.

Children may not attend their neighborhood school in SFUSD because the system prioritizes diversity, equity, and access over proximity. They do that to address racial and economic segregation but basically it was the cheapest way to solve the problem. See Board Policy 5101.

I think in 2027, SFUSD might be transitioning to an elementary zone-based assignment system. I’m not anymore involved in that but I can tell that is a very very politically charged. Very ugly. All they did it make website more confusing.

In the end, only 20% of kids ended up going to their neighborhood schools. [1]

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/sf-sch...

"the cheapest way to solve the problem"

Which, it should be noted, has not at all solved the problem. Shockingly.

Okay, I can find this board policy. However, I still can’t square your account with theirs, see https://www.sfusd.edu/schools/enroll/student-assignment-poli...

> Students applying for a SFUSD schools submit a preferred or ranked list of choices. If there are no space limitations, students are assigned to their highest ranked choice.

and also:

> Due to space limitations, not all students will be assigned to one of their choices. Those students will be assigned to a school with available seats closest to the student’s home.

So it seems like proximity does play a role?

The way SFUSD placed kids, after checking whether they have siblings, or pre-K attendance, is:

Test Score Area (CTIP1) Students who live in areas of the city with the lowest average test scores.

Which will tend to fill good schools in good areas from kids in areas with bad schools. After that they look at proximity, but most or all spaces will have been filled.

Attendance Area Elementary school students who live in the attendance area of the elementary school requested

It effectively means a lot of neighborhood swapping, and driving kids to schools.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210204205328/https://www.sfusd...

> in SF, there’s a policy that prevents kids from attending elementary school in their own neighborhoods

thats a solid reason to leave the place already

I'm 40 years old and have lived in the Helsinki metropolitan area my whole life. I have a licence, but I have never owned a car because I don't need it. I drive maybe twice a year when I need to go somewhere I can't reach by public transport, I borrow a relative or friend's car for that.

That's a no-starter in the land of free, because Helsinki has "less diversity" -- of course they don't mind being in a public space with other people.

No hopefully, dear Leader will solve this problem for America and then they could have all the benefits of the civilization, once all undesirables are deported.

It's no coincidence that USSR had both GULAGs and public transport -- only after letting your inner authoritarian out you can have the nice things and US is half the way through.

Public transport in Berlin and London is pretty good and both are quite multicultural.

Last time I spoke to my German family they told me they don't like taking trains or busses anymore because of recent developments, take it for what you will

I'm a heavy commuter and have been for the last two decades and there are no recent developments worth talking about, take it for what you will.

Even places with good public transport have lots of cars. Cars always fill up all space. You need good public transport, and limit cars in other ways for good results.

The same question could be asked why more cars elsewhere. If only the western municipalities could figure out how to do it without spending decade on a simple tram like they do in Toronto then the public support would very likely match the benefits people constantly claim on the internet. Ditto with high speed rail.

Things which are practical and economically feasible within the established system are much less liable to be controversial or end up DOA after having to survive through 3-4 different political administrations.

Public transport in and around Helsinki is extremely good. Both busses and rail are very reliable, comfortable and clean with free wifi everywhere.

Interesting how you provided a counter example for the “Scandinavian genious” hypothesis and all comments are simply deflecting that and restating unrelated stats.

Because having less cars is both intentional and a result of public policies, and this is covered in the article.

Are you referring to the Jersey City mention when you say counterexample? It’s excellent and absolutely worth celebrating that a US city was able to achieve this for a year, but just like Helsinki’s car-use stats, it was also no fluke: not only Jersey City in the most transit-friendly metro area in the country (NYC), but they’ve also had a huge focus on trying to achieve vision zero and (unlike many other cities who claim to also be trying to achieve vision zero) have been aggressively implementing changes to street design that improve safety, often by slowing down cars [1, 2].

And unfortunately, Jersey City had deaths on their city roads again in 2023 and 2024 [3]. We need to be doing everything we can to study places that are doing things well, because we have a long way to go.

1. https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-dayli... 2. https://youtu.be/gwu1Cf8G9u8?si=2WWsj5EvTs8CTU8T 3. https://cdnsm5-hosted.civiclive.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server...

This is the most "p-hacking" thing ever. If you take a hundred US cities over 20 years you have 2000 data points. The probability of outliers to cherry pick from is quite high. Doesn't mean that jersey is not doing things right but please don't act like it's the shining example of vehicular safety.

It's not comparable to Nordic countries at all.

Itll for sure get worse once most cars are autonomous and are programmed badly

Every time I see a Cybertruck while I'm on my bike I am stunned at how badly that thing is designed, it's got a hood higher than my head and a front that slopes backwards as it goes down, so that anything it hits is just naturally shoved under it, this is a machine built for vehicular homicide. How the fuck did that get allowed on the road at all.

It's not allowed in Europe, and I very much doubt it ever will be.

FWIW Cybertruck (and all other teslas) have a forward collision warning system that can detect pedestrians and automatically brake. Not perfectly of course, but better than other cars. Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either.

>Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either.

What is the primary cause of increased US pedestrian deaths?

My money would go on mobile phone usage.

Every countries in the world got cellphones. Many saw a drop in fatalies on the road, others it went up (US). Cellphones surely don’t help and are awful but once you hit someone the size of the car (and speed!) matters on the outcome and cars are bigger in the US.

"Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA"

Evidence free claim. Sometimes correlation indicates causation.

Incorrect. Light trucks account for 54% of pedestrian fatalities compared to passenger cars at 37%. Impossible for more than half to not be considered the primary cause.

https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalit...

Have you been to Finland? It is a very safety conscious culture. This isn’t just some fluke.

> Maybe Helsinki isn’t special: just fewer cars

That is special for a modern western city, and is likely the result of intentional policy and urban planning.

Many cities base most of their development around fitting in more cars, not reducing them. And that comes with lots of negative statistics related to car density.

You’re right that it’s not magic. Other cities could likely achieve similar results with similar policies. They are just very resistant to that change.

> not about urban planning genius or Scandinavian magic

Fewer cars IS THE MAGIC and fewer cars IS GREAT URBAN planning.

Cars are obviously the problem. All cars, small cars, large cars, gas cars, electric cars, all cars are the problem.

Yes. In the future there will be no cars and no deaths related to them. We just live in the 1800' of our time.

This is a nonsensical generalization.

This is the observation: we massively overshoot in terms of the role (space, infrastructure) we assign to cars, especially in densely populated areas.

If we can create viable alternatives to driving we can make these places much, much more enjoyable. Quieter, nicer to be around, more human scale, more convenient.

That’s all. Nowhere in there is any claim that cars aren’t immensely useful. In less densely populated people. For people with disabilities. Etc.

Why can’t we have the nice things? And yeah, the nice things do include walkable cities like we had them in 19th century. Sometimes and in some places to a very limited extent the past with some modern conveniences (like trams, modern bicycles) was better.

I don't think bicycles, trams, buses and trains existed back then in the way they do now.

I bet horse-related deaths have dropped

There used to be dozens of traffic deaths per year in Helsinki back in the 60s. When there were fewer people and much fewer cars. Most of the dead were pedestrians (as opposed to outside urban zones where motorists mostly tend to kill themselves and any unfortunate passengers). Do NOT dare to downplay this achievement. It is the result of decades of work and changing attitudes of what is acceptable.

> Plus their cars are much smaller.

Not smaller then in other European places. It is just that US cars are extremely huge.

Exactly. US is the outlier vs the rest of the world when it comes to car size.

Ooh wow. How big are Canadian cars?

Smaller than US cars on average.

Source?

But... fewer cars and fewer trips using a car is literally the thing that makes it better.

Achieving a low amount of trips done by car is already something that doesn't happen magically, and is the result of policy decisions (e.g., invest in public transport). Then there are speed limits, road designs etc.

And the cost of parking... Parking your car in Hki is eye-watering

Weekdays during office hours, yeah. Sundays street parking is mostly free.

> So maybe it’s not about urban planning

That's ridiclulous, there's fewer cars because there is good urban planning...

An infinite number of cities in the world are less dense than Helsinki but are traffic-ridden shitholes because they are developed with only The Car in mind.

but it would probably be hard to find an American city of just 10k people that didn't have a few car/car-related deaths a year, DUI, pedestrians, bicyclists--something. Helsinki is 660,000 people