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Helsinki Aims To Obviate Private Cars
New submitter NBSCALIDBA writes: Eeva Haaramo reports on Helsinki's ambitious plan to transform city transportation. From on-demand buses to city bikes to Kutsuplus mini-transport vans, the Finnish capital is trying to change the whole concept of getting around in a city. "Under the plan, all these services will be accessed through a single online platform. People will be able to buy their transport in service packages that work like mobile phone tariffs: either as a complete monthly deal or pay as you go options based on individual usage. Any number of companies can use the platform to offer transport packages, and if users find their travel needs change, they'll be able to switch packages or moved to a rival with a better deal."
count me out... this sort of stuff just makes me want to live on a remote tropical island and spend my days fishing.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
No links, Really? in many years of reading his site daily i'm not sure i recall when a story was posted without a single f*cking link to the source material or supporting info.
Perhaps this thing is entirely made up... i think ill start submitting stories now - or is this a Beta story?
Come on guys!!
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Thrilling, but can we get literally any information from a source? I know, I know, no one reads the article, but still. This isn't an Ask Slashdot nor is it an interview, so some sort of article would be nice.
Cynical Idealist
Yeah links are missing, perhaps because the source is finnish only?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Expect all sorts of (spurious) legal challenges from the motor industry ... they won't want their business badly dented.
I found it:
http://www.zdnet.com/death-of-the-car-the-tech-behind-helsinkis-ambitious-plan-to-kill-off-private-vehicles-7000032735/
In order to transition an economy or government to true socialism, the first step is to remove the concept of private ownership over anything especially the things that allow you to carry out your daily activities and sustain yourself.
To me the plan sounds like you end up with every car you use giving you the reliability of a rental, with the "oops no cars are available now" factor of services like ZipCar...
But perhaps in a more isolated culture where people do not abuse things they do not own, the cars will be treated well and availability will work out well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Companies offering transportation packages will start behaving like telco's. ie offering bundles with stuff in it you don't need. New packages with new names and new "features" every 6 months, you can not extend your existing deal. An unlimited plan will turn out to be not so unlimited. And when they fuck up and can not deliver you are entitled to $0.02 per day in compensation, if any.
In all big cities I've been to (not Helsinki), private cars are already pretty obvious.
This kind of system usually isn't good if you are visiting a sequence of places, picking up some stuff and/or dropping off other stuff at each place. This also doesn't allow you to customize your car interior to your preferences. What is really needed is a system that embraces private ownership of the cars, so that people who want to can own their car and use it in the system. People who don't have those needs can use the public cars.
1) You have people pick you up and take you places. This will work reasonably well for pre-planned activities - such as your commute, but be very crappy for spontaneous needs. Just like normal taxis.
2) You don't "own" the car, but it can and will stay at your home/office with no one watching it for hours before/after you use it. Some other people may use it during the hours you don't - such as while you are at work or late at night. Effectively you are the renting from a place that delivers and picks up.
Neither of these ideas seem workable to me. Both are not significantly different than existing one time use services, we are simply adding in a long term contract for the Taxis or car rental places (with delivery).
People like owning cars for many good reasons.
That said, once we have driverless cars, such a plan COULD actually work, in large part because suddenly your don't need to arrange for people to drop off your car/pick it up, it does it automatically.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Here's a link to the article, since the editor didn't see fit to provide one.
At least until that self driving car shows up with a dead person in the trunk or a giant pile of shit in the back seat from the drunk who used it before you. Sometimes they may even show up with your favorite opportunistic mugger.
Younger generations in general don't identify themselves with their car like older generations did. This, plus autonomous vehicles is just the way the future will be. You can own, for a high cost, or for a more reasonable cost, you can let a rentable autonomous vehicle get you there while you enjoy the morning news, reading, etc. For those that really like to have their hands on the wheel and to own CDs, maybe you can opt out... Until the cost of private ownership skyrockets due to dwindling demand.
Here's a link to a recent post on Bloomberg.com about this same topic: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-15/millennials-want-apps-not-cars
Yeah!
Communists have been trying to kill private transport since the Communist Manifesto was published. People who can travel without permission are much more dangerous to the State than those who can be forced to walk at any time.
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My town has a thriving downtown - also has services like Car2Go. That's how I know they can at times be scarce or distant. We also have a city bike rental program that works pretty well.
Since there are no links with real info I have to assume the Helsinki plan is like ZipCar/Car2Go, where you just can collect a car somewhere and use it for some period of time to go wherever - but instead of just the one kind of car, it would include bikes and larger trucks too. I just figure if you do go for that and lean on such a program instead of leasing or owning a car, the vehicles (like all rental cars) may not be treated well.
Being in Helsinki though, it's not as likely as if you tried such a thing in NYC. Even where I live the rental bikes take quite a beating and some of them show it (not hard to find at least one flat tire in a rack of bikes).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Back before the days of public sewage, I would understand living the country. Before laws against air pollution, city air was shit. I don't understand why people would ever want to be so distant from one another -- we've a social species. We don't need distant farms at this point.
I love that there's music at night, made live by humans -- and sometimes I even get to dance with the people making it! How in the world are you supposed to find an orchestra to play with in BFE (I play clarinet -- not exactly a great solo instrument)? If you like gardening, there's community gardens all over that I don't need to tend every single day.
Cities are also easier on the environment. By centralizing transportation, waste management, and education, you achieve savings just from the economies of scale. Cities subsidize the rest of the country as it's literally not efficient to have roads/phonelines/internet/etc to nowhere -- destroying the environment in the process. As far as crime, I like having a decent police force so I don't have to own a shotgun.
Issues with racists, idiots, homophobes, and the chain score hellscape that litters small town America -- I have no idea why anyone could ever love such a thing except out of ignorance.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Many years ago cities made sense. Factories to make steel, shoes, ketchup, shirts and other goods scaled well to gigantic sizes. Having the workers' living quarters hived up in close proximity to their employment was natural as there was no viable alternative. No one was yet doing more than dreaming of pervasive automation. Cities allowed stunningly great libraries and concert halls and baseball parks to be provided.
Yo, things have changed. It is not necessary any longer to clump gigantic numbers of people into tiny areas in which it is impossible to efficiently support personal transportation. It is not technically and logistically necessary for us to live in a milieu in which it is necessary to call some agency to take us somewhere. The internet could be extended in non-commercialized ways to fully provide all the resources of libraries and a great deal more.
I can see a place for a certain supply of centralized areas for those who cannot adjust to living any other way than like cattle. Feel free to phrase it differently. A richness of cultural and service facilities can be provided in built-up areas. But by and large the concept of the city, un-navigable by private conveyance, fighting for innovative ways to move people about efficiently.
What if these built-up areas concentrated on what they are uniquely suited for? What if people traveled to them (and a few lived there) for the culture? Optimize them for that, and make them pay their way doing that.
It needn't be whole-hog Asimov Spacers level sprawl, but living with elbow room and not with jammed-up crowds constantly getting in your way.
Just a thought.
" As far as crime, I like having a decent police force so I don't have to own a shotgun." like the one in America, i.e. Ferguson ? ;)
It looks nice, this "single platform", but it easily becomes a single point of failure.
Also, I'd likely have to register, make myself known, end up completely trackable, over all modes of transport, conveniently gathered in a single place for law enforcement, private eyes, and perhaps even "oops, sorry!" for any vaguely clever onlooker at all.
There's so many issues I'd sooner say "wtf mate".
Finland has about 3 million passenger cars in use by a population of 5.46 million.
Finland, Vehicle stock grew in 2012
Helsinki has some 390 cars per 1000 inhabitants. This is less than in cities of similar density, such as Brussels' 483 per 1000, Stockholm's 401, and Oslo's 413.
Today, Helsinki is the only city in Finland to have trams and metro trains. There used to be two other cities in Finland with trams: Turku and Viipuri (Vyborg, now in Russia), but both have since abandoned trams. The Helsinki Metro, opened in 1982, is the only rapid transit system in Finland.
Helsinki
Right now society (jobs, business interactions, legal obligations, etc) are generally structured around the common denominator of automobile transit. Your boss expects you to get to work around the basic parameters of what you can do in a car.
It's great to eliminate the car at some municipal level, now make "the bus didn't show up" or "there were no Uber/Zipcar/Car2Gos available" as some kind of universally accepted, legally unchangeable excuse for missing work, a court appearance, daycare pickup, etc.
One of the problems with the "yay, no cars!" world is that the rest of the world goes on making assumptions about people moving about that are based on the ability to get from point A to point B in a car.
Sure, in some places like NYC, a subway glitch will usually be accepted (in fact, I think they have a process for issuing excuse notes) and when I worked in a downtown office where there were a lot of bus riders, weather problems with the bus were generally not questioned or a cause for action.
But generally speaking society as a whole just assumes you're at fault.
I understand that for people who live in places that are warm year round, bicycles are a viable method of transportation. Where I live, there is ice and snow on the road for at least 8 months a year. Its not like 'oh just give it a light whisk with the broom, there, now its gone..' NO! When I mean snow, I mean a *lot* of it, and if you said dynamite, then yes, its removable. A 30 ton construction grader has a blade that is made of 3/4 inch (19mm) hardened steel. It skates over ice like ducks on a frozen pond. The coefficient of friction for ice is far less than it is for asphalt or concrete. There is no traction for a bicycle wheel, not just the back wheel but the front wheel too. Want to turn? Watch the handle bars move but you keep gong in the same direction. Now where I live, there are (idiots/morons) who come from these warm-all-year places, and tell us that we should all use bicycles all year long. They always come in the summer, never in winter. I've seen pictures of these places when they actually get a bit of winter because it always makes the nightly news: the city shuts down. But it doesn't stop them from trying. "Oh, you should ride a bike, get rid of that old car..." My plan: when its -28C, invite them to come and ride their bike for a few miles. "Oh, its too cold you can't go now, you have to wait till its warmer..." Only 4-5 months, no prob.
Wow, so much spewed opinion you seem to think is fact.
First, air in cities is generally worse than outside cities. You'll be able to find counter-examples, say outside a rural factory, but generally, no matter where you go in the world, city air is worse than rural air.
You're right that we are mostly a social species. However, this means different things to different people. Maybe you are more social than most. Personally, I have a family I enjoy seeing, and other than that I'm quite happy interacting with just a few other people every week. I neither want nor need more. The difference between the two of us seems to be that I'm willing to let you lead your lifestyle whereas you're unwilling to let me lead mine.
You're right that cities are easier on the environment on a per capita basis. Of course, there are also plenty of ways that people could be more distributed in a more environmentally advantageous fashion. If you have any interest in the subject and a certain level of intelligence it wouldn't be hard for you to come up with some ideas. Travelling around in other first world countries in Europe would also give you plenty of other viewpoints.
Additionally, while it's true that cities do in some ways subsidize rural areas, where do you think your food comes from? Other cities? Around here, stickers reminding us that "farmers feed cities" are quite common. Thank you for reminding me that there are people out there like you who need reminding. Finally, it's very rare for roads/phoneline/internet/etc to lead "nowhere". They lead somewhere, just apparently to areas you don't think are necessary.
Since you're the one painting "small town America" with one wide brush that includes racists, idiots, homophobes and chain store hellscapes, I'll throw that one back to you and state you're the one with the perception problems. The world outside your city is much bigger, and more important, than you seem to make it out to be. There are plenty racists, idiots, homophobes and chain stores in urban environments, and plenty of intelligent, tolerant, and educated people working in small business in small towns and rural communities all across your country.
For the record, I've spent close to a decade living in the US. I've lived in some of the world's largest cities, and worked in and travelled to many more. I feel very fortunate and privileged to now live on a farm in the country. Overall, my quality of life here is better than anywhere else I've lived.
www.clarke.ca
I can commute farther in the state of California than the entire nation of Finland. Solutions that are workable and even desirable in certain locations are not logistically feasible in others.
I was very impressed with the public transportation options in GB, but the distances there lend themselves to such.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
That public transportation works as it does now. It evolved to be like this, the chance you can suddenly invent a better is slim.
People pay $1000/ft and up, plus about 6% city income tax, to live in New York. They pay $50/ft to live in a typical suburb. If you don't think markets make any sense whatsoever, then you have a point. Otherwise, it looks as if people don't live in the city because they can't afford to, and get the space as a fringe benefit.
Finland has one of the higher rates of motor vehicle ownership per capita in the world. So despite all the talk, they don't seem to be getting out of their cars.
Hey, and I'm just spitballin' here, but we could name the system, uh ... UBER!
Scandinavians are amazing. They've gone in just a few centuries from being fierce Viking warriors who went almost everywhere in Eurasia to heavily socialized nations so wimpy they meekly agree to ride a bus because a city tells them that's what they must do.
I guess that proves that in the nature versus nature debate, nature doesn't count for much. Alas, genetic tests say I am about 15% Viking.
What will it take to get your 'platform' listed in their app?
Lots and lots of people cycle to where they need to go in the winter, and -28 is a pretty common winter temperature
I would like to see a real breakdown by age, sex, martial status, income, injuries and deaths in traffic, and reports of medical emergencies like hypothermia, heart attacks and so on,
You think people only choose to live in cities because they haven't noticed the internet or television?
People attach different values to different things. People who love living in cities (I'm one of them) place a lot of value on "walking culture", "proximity to varied attractions", "interacting with a potpourri of people", "having a smaller environmental footprint", etc.--and less value on having a large home or a big car. I can totally understand someone else valuing those things differently and reaching a different conclusion. It's a big world and there are a lot of different ways to live.
> "cannot adjust to living any other way than like cattle"
What is it with suburbanites that they feel personally attacked (to the point of lashing out with childish hyperbole) by anybody anywhere choosing a different lifestyle than themselves?
Seriously dude, hop in your car and drive 35 minutes to your 'neighborhood' Applebee's, order some jalapeno poppers and relax.
You can't imagine why anyone would want to live in a big city, but apparently you think small cities are okay. Somebody else in this thread can't imagine why anyone would want to live anywhere other than suburbs. I'm sure somebody else is going to pipe up saying we should all live on farms, or on boats. Do you see the trend?
Part of me would love to counter your smug condescending critique of big cities by telling you all the ways that NYC is superior to whatever strip mall shit hole you live in; but the problem is I don't really believe that NYC is superior. Instead, I think that different people value things differently.
It's a big world, there are lots of different ways to live.
Have gnu, will travel.
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This story has been circulating around the internet, mostly on the treehugging sites, for several months already. Funny that I live in Helsinki and never once heard of this nonsense from any local media. They've also been working on a train from the city center to the airport - for over 15 years. No signs of that track yet. They've also been working on the Länsimetro (west Helsinki metro) for over 15 years. No signs of that yet, either. They've also been trying to ban smoking in Finland, as in entirely, but it's only served to increase smoking (despite what the numbers say, I see it). Bottom line: Finnish government will not give up their car tax revenues and Helsinki residents will not give up their cars.
There is a difference. Not that anyone has actually noticed.
They'd get a licence to the name Uber. They'd call their franchise Deutschland Uber. They'd put this in a holding company called: Deutschland Uber Alles. /runs - stop shooting!
Back in 1900, people had only two kinds of habitats - dense cities, like Boston, NY and San Francisco, and rural areas with lots of elbow room. Freeways allowed for urban sprawl - moving people and manufacturing out into what was farmland or open spaces. California now has a lot of people spread out with medium to low housing density, San Francisco being the exception with very high density. The freeways that once allowed speedy travel from Sacramento to San Jose are now a traffic nightmare, as all these people travel from their low density housing areas to either other low density employment areas or urban cores. Instead of living like cattle in a city, they live like cattle in their car, commuting. But what about those lower density states, like Montana and Kansas, with fewer total people? When you have smaller communities with lots of elbow room, the per-capita cost of improvements is higher. Freeways, Postal Routes, water, gas lines, power lines, and even high speed data lines are relatively more expensive because there are fewer people to spread the cost over.