Advanced public transportation and urban biking accessibility allow Scandinavians to move through their cities with ease.
Getting around a city can be difficult. Consistent traffic, confusing metro maps, and overcrowded sidewalks often make it frustrating to navigate, especially in a foreign place. When visiting Stockholm and Copenhagen, not only was it easy to move around the city, but it was easy to do so with a low environmental impact.
The most noticeable part of the transportation infrastructure in both of these cities was the amount of bike lanes. They are on most major streets and are accessible to bikers of all levels. This is very different from Washington, DC, where I attend school, where there are few bike lanes which are often in between the two car lanes of a busy road. It is intimidating to bike there, so few people do. In Stockholm and Copenhagen, fleets of bikes fill the roads during rush hour.
While biking doesn't always diminish environmental impacts, as noted in this post, it is certainly more sustainable and healthy to ride a bike to and from work instead of riding in a fossil fuel-powered car alone each day.
For those who don't bike, public transportation is efficient, effective, and easy. Electric trains run throughout the cities with maps that are easy for non-locals to understand (unlike the New York City subway map). The trains stretch out into the suburbs, making for a simple commute. Similarly, bus routes run throughout the city and most busses are powered by electricity or biofuels.
One controversial part of transportation that we learned about in Copenhagen is the tax on cars, which forces residents to pay 150% of the price of their car to the city of Copenhagen. This certainly forces people to take advantage of the bike lanes and public transportation, as owning a car is not an option for people on a budget, particularly young people.
The fact that many people do not have an option other than to take public transportation throughout Copenhagen (because of the high cost of owning a car) does make it slightly less appealing, especially as someone who comes from a country which embraces a national identity of individual liberty. I don't think that the car tax would be an easy regulation to implement in any American city, no matter how liberal. Furthermore, as I mention in another post, the road trip is so central to the American identity that I can't imagine families going without at least one car, as so many people drive for hours as an affordable and enjoyable way to visit family, head to national parks, or just see the country. While renting a car seems like an obvious option, there is something about the idea of individualism and ownership that seems so engrained in the American mind that it is hard for me to see this as a transition that Americans are willing to make.