Ulf Kristersson wanted fewer cars in the big cities.
Photo: LARS SCHRÖDER/TT / TT NEWS AGENCY
But now he is run over by his party comrades in Stockholm.
Photo: FREDRIK PERSSON / PERSSON FREDRIK PB PRESS’S PHOTO
Patrik Kronqvist
In June last year, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson made an unexpected green move: Car traffic must be limited in the cities.
– Electrification will solve some problems. But that doesn’t solve the fact that the city is too much made for cars, he explained in an interview with Expressen’s Tomas Nordenskiöld.
It was a wise move – even if it echoed empty policy proposals.
In big cities all over the world, the same conclusion has been drawn. The fact that the cars run on electricity instead of gasoline does not change the fact that they take up far too much space in the places where the land is most valuable.
The cars have been ported from Times Square in New York, from the banks of the Seine in Paris and from the avenues of Barcelona. Even in BMW’s hometown of Munich – Kristersson’s favorite example – they’ve had their fair share.
The advantages are obvious:
The cities are becoming more attractive. When parking spaces and car lanes are allowed to give way to outdoor seating, boardwalks and wider sidewalks, it creates places where people want to be – not just park. It is no coincidence that modern tech companies such as Spotify and Klarna are now located in central Stockholm and not in the old IT mecca in Kista.
It does wonders for accessibility. In cities with growing pains, trams, bus lanes and bike lanes can transport significantly more people than if people drive themselves in their own cars.
It creates justice in climate change. It is reasonable that the big cities take a greater responsibility than the countryside to reduce car use.
The big profits have meant that the question of the car’s place in the big city can no longer be easily placed on the right-left scale. Both blue and red politicians build pedestrian streets and bike lanes and introduce car tolls.
It’s only leaders with low confidence and lousy poll numbers – like UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – who try to save their political skins by flirting with big-city motorists.
The policy appears to be purely self-harming behaviour.
Unfortunately, the Moderates in Stockholm join that crowd.
The public M sniping against Ulf Kristersson took off immediately after his outing in Expressen.
“Stop competing with the left for prohibition and instead affirm freedom and people’s opportunity to travel and mobility,” wrote regional councilor Kristoffer Tamsons in Di in a poorly concealed attack on his party leader.
That it was mainly the mobility of motorists that he cared about became obvious when, in the same vein, he campaigned for scrap a planned cycle bridge at Slussen, the place in Sweden with the most cyclists.
A month or so later, his party colleague Dennis Wedin, opposition councilor in the city of Stockholm, stormed against the plans to shut down traffic on Sveavägen for four weekends this summer.
Out in the world, it is a proven concept to attract people to the center when the weather is nice and there are fewer cars. But according to Wedin, it’s just a way to “fuck the Stockholmers”.
This week came the real death blow against Ulf Kristersson’s attempt at a new green approach. The M leader in the city of Stockholm, Christofer Fjellner, then fought against the red-green board’s decision to raise the price for residential parking in the inner city.
Since 2016, the Moderates in the region have raised the price of the SL card sharply. But the party therefore thinks that the price for parking your car in central Stockholm should remain as low as it was eight years ago. Christofer Fjellner also wants to increase the number of parking spaces inside the customs by 1,000.
It’s planned economy and stale car populism at its worst.
The fact that it is difficult to find parking in central Stockholm is not because there are too few places, but because the price is artificially low. Hundreds of garage spaces have already been removed in the inner city because property owners cannot possibly compete with the low price of municipal residential parking.
Moderates tend to believe that pricing is an excellent way of allocating scarce resources. It’s just so typical that they always forget it when it comes to shopping about cars and not housing. The smell of gasoline makes socialists out of otherwise pure market liberals.
The result is that motorists are condemned to drive disconsolately around the neighborhood in the evenings in search of a free window – the bread line of the urban middle class.
The most depressing thing is that the plot comes from Christofer Fjellner. After all, he is the politician who has been tasked by the party leadership to come up with a new climate policy that can attract voters in big cities.
His answer is that the cars should have even more space and that in the place with the best public transport in Sweden – and perhaps also in the world.
The moderates will back off with an SUV into the future. Hum hum!
The hope that greener traffic policies will be enough to attract back the more progressive big-city voters who have turned their backs on the Moderates is probably vain.
But to instead let a bunch of whiny car guys go to the polls for more parking spaces and lower fees in central Stockholm appears to be purely self-harming behaviour.
A line by Tony Blair from the film The Queen pops into mind:
Can someone please save these people from themselves?
Patrik Kronqvist is political editor and head of Expressen’s editorial page. Read more of his texts here.
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