Harsh winter fucks up Swedish transportation

Zeal said:
who decides who is qualified?
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You answered your own question:

Zeal said:
education
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That's what technocracy is all about. You see, in Sweden we have small local governments everywhere. Despite having one of the lowest population densities in the world, and being a small country overall, Sweden is run pretty much as an indirect federation. Even the closest thing you come to city councils (ie "Kommunstyrelser") are democratically elected here.

Now, I'm all for a democratically elected parliament that forms a government. They pretty much set the standards and choose the direction the country as a whole is headed, which is often purely political.

But what's the point of democratically elected city councils? All of the problems that arise in a municipality are almost purely practical. Potholes in the road? Repair them. Trains bogged down by snow? Clear the tracks. What's the difference if the council members are from a certain political party? Some argue that if councils would be appointed based on actual qualifications (like a certain University degree) by a centralized government you would lose the voice of the locals. Well, the people that get elected are affiliated to a political party anyway, and follow the directions of a party bureau that's often located in or around Stockholm.

I don't vote in the municipal elections, never have, never will, simply because I'm principally opposed to that particular democratic process. At least in a tiny country such as Sweden (that's unfortunately being run at the scale of some interstellar federation of planets for some reason. Thanks, 1970's).

What we have now are councils made up of incompetent idiots who have barely graduated high school, that consult "technicians" (i.e. people with the proper education and skills) when trying to solve a practical problem. I say why not cut out the middle man? Let the "technicians" make the decisions? You'll never get rid of political ambition and corruption, like Zeal clumsily stated, but you can at least try to minimize it.

Maybe a good compromise would be a democratically elected council where the candidates have to meet certain qualifications? This is also interesting on a national level, where ministers are switched at random, without actually having any skills in the subject (for instance, the current Minister of Commerce is a dentist), but solely based on what their opinions are. This is alright at a national level, because all the decisions made are long-term and often indirect. But over here, the subway trains are still 8 minutes apart on a friday afternoon.


Another funny detail about the state monopoly on railways; the state/city monopoly on the subway in Stockholm has been given over to some Chinese company, effectively creating a corporate monopoly. Do they bother to fulfill their contract? No. But do they survive by bribing every politician in sight? Probably. This is a pretty ugly thing that happens when you fail at transitioning from socialism to a free market.


To sum it up: democratically elected officials at a national level, yes. At a local, municipal level? No. Replace with technocracy. I think I can sacrifice some of my "freedom" to get on the train without being crushed to death or having to sleep over in the middle of the forest during winter.
 
You'd be surprised about the amount of political conflicts that can happen on a local level.
 
That's the thing, they needn't and shouldn't exist. I am well aware of them, and it angers me whenever I read about it in the newspaper.

When solving practical problems such as this one, there's usually one right answer, and an infinite number of wrong answers.
 
victor said:
That's the thing, they needn't and shouldn't exist. I am well aware of them, and it angers me whenever I read about it in the newspaper.

When solving practical problems such as this one, there's usually one right answer, and an infinite number of wrong answers.
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Most of the problems stem from budget decisions: what to spend the limited amount of money on. And there's no real right answer for most of those decisions, as they're questions of priority. Do you want to improve infrastructure, improve road safety, support the local sports team, work on integration, spend money on getting bums and drug addicts off the street, increase police spending? There are dozens of possibilities.
 
I dont understand what would be gained from the sacrifice of freedom.

The city council only decides what to do with potholes? They also decide in which direction the budget will go: better/more education (more schools or improving the ones that already exit? more libraries or re-stocking?), more mass transport? perhaps more green zones this year.

Afterall the council just does the planning according to the needs of "the people" and the budget, then civil eng., architects, construction workers, are the ones that raises the new libraries/train station/etc and cover the potholes.

Cutting the middle man would be giving then power of policy making without any type of responsabilization. At least, although not entirely effective, with the "status quo" every 4-5 years there are elections and noone wants to say goodbye to the high chair.

Or perhaps you are saying the masses dont know whats better for them or shouldnt decide in all aspects of how a city is managed?

The real problem is lack of long plan thinking and responsabilization.

You also said who runs the councils are uneducated, then spread education... Im afraid that means most of the voters (by your perspective) are unneducated. Oligarchies thrive there and you want to give them the key of the city?

Plus i find that at least in Portugal, according to the region, the needs vary not only due to pragmatical reasons but to philosophical ones, which doesnt works with over-centralized political regime.

I think its good we have city councils and you can vote for them... that way when i ask "who decides who is qualified" i am really answearing my question, and "outsmarting myself ^^"
 
Hmmm. A few months ago, I was like you. That is, I was in France and used to bitch occasionnaly about 8 minute of latency between trains.

Then I moved to Italy... and, to put it simply, when I wait just 8 minutes for a bus, I'm actually pretty happy. The average tends more toward 15min

Here in Italy, you don't just have just strikes, you also have "40% of the drivers didn't show up today, but it's not a strike, it just... happened"
The 24th of december, bus traffic stopped around 15:00 whereas it was "supposed" to go until 19:00 (which was already almost scandalous)...

Anyway, public transportation is both one of the most marvelous inventions of our civilization and one of the most appropriate topic to bitch about
 
Having an educated city council has little to do with centralization of power, see my above post. And read about the compromise I suggested. As I see it, educated professionals could handle the budget just as good, if not better, than most politicians, and probably wouldn't squander as much money. It would also probably minimize bureaucracy.

Your arguments are very confusing, Zeal. You speak of "spreading education" (whatever that means), and then go on to rant about an oligarchy? And I really don't see how uneducated politicians see to the interest of the people more than selectively chosen professionals. They have loyalty to no one but themselves, their party, and the company that can pay the highest bribe. At least professionals often have some dedication to their field.

There is a right answer to how to spend the budget, actually. See that every need is met, the urgent ones (e.g. the current transportation issues) take priority.

I just fail to see what good career politicians do in a city council. Of course this model probably wouldn't work for a larger country, but for a tiny country like Sweden it's much better than the one in place now.

Interestingly, Sweden is supposed to be one of the highest educated countries in the world, but many of our government ministers dropped out of University or never even attended, instead climbing the political ladder within their party.
 
victor said:
There is a right answer to how to spend the budget, actually. See that every need is met, the urgent ones (e.g. the current transportation issues) take priority.
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*snigger*
That's it, huh? Just the urgent ones? So, you don't think different people think differently about what is actually urgent?

It's also nonsense because long-term investments can be better than short-term urgent investments.
 
Well, the transportation issue arises again every year, and when the snow melts, everyone seems to forget about it.

It's just that this time, it's an accumulation of years of neglect.

What I meant was that resource allocation can be pretty fucking obvious at times, like now.
 
victor said:
Well, the transportation issue arises again every year, and when the snow melts, everyone seems to forget about it.

It's just that this time, it's an accumulation of years of neglect.

What I meant was that resource allocation can be pretty fucking obvious at times, like now.
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Sometimes, sure. But most of the time it's a much bigger mess, and that's where politics come in. I get that you're frustrated the transportation doesn't work, but it seems like ou're writing off an entire set of problems as trivial based on that one situation.
 
Trains in norway suffer from a lack of money and terrible organisation. The few people with ability that get hired to do a job usually thinks it futile after a few years work with the organisation. They have finally started on uppgrading the Messenger system with a new type of tech that does not get knocked out by snow. turns out this system has been available since the 70s but only being installed now.
 
This just in: public transportation will be even worse tomorrow, spokesman for the transportation operator says "the solution lies in warmer temperatures".

Why aren't these people fired and replaced? Oh, that's right, because of our incompetence-preserving work protection laws.

I'll probably have to walk to school tomorrow, and it ain't exactly warm outside.
 
Meanwhile Iceland continues to defy the world by not living up to its name, with temperatures just below zero and the southern parts of the country snow-free.

Furthermore we don't even have a railway system, so we can't bitch about that.
 
thats why brazil is the best country in the world, we dont have neither railways neither snow! yay!
[irony/]

I cant really complain, I live in one of the best cities in one of the best regions of Brazil when it comes to public transportation. We dont have much of natural issues ruining up our transportations (except some REALLY BADDASS rain storms here and there, which are becoming strangely quite often lately).
This, on the public transportations that actually exist: buses (which are "meh" to "not so bad") and subways (which I cant complain at all). For some dumbass reason in the fifties, our goverment thought that investing ALL their money in highways instead of putting some money into conventional roads and some money into railways was a REALLY GREAT and "developed country" idea. Needless to say that we all suffer from that until nowadays (suffer and dont do shit about that).

We have LOTS of issues on transportations here. Federal highways are shit, full of holes, while state's highways are mostly awesome.
Our subway and railway system works pretty well, but its quite small yet, and do not cover most of areas of our cities (although theres a expansion program going on right now on my state, but its hardly goin g to resolve all the issues.) taxes here are REALLY high too, and although I can understand the metro fares rising, I cannot understand why the buses fares rise too, since they are not being developed for quite a good amount of time.

So, as you can see, our problem with public transportation are mostly human and political, not very different from yours. I dont know about your country neither your pespectives, but only tihng that keeps me kind of content about things, is that Brazil is developing quite fast in the last years, and maybe some of these infrastructural problems are going to be solved. Plus, deep in my heart, I hope someday, the idea of investing money in education will get in politicians heads, because for the last 200 years, thats some thing that Brazilians havent understood yet. When our "little issue" with education be solved, then I'll have lot of hope on evertyhing else.
 
I work for a SL subcontractor that handles security issues, and believe you me, to have these bureaucratic fatcats pulling your strings is unbearable.

No matter whether your a commuter or an actual employee, they stick it in and break it off whenever they can.
 
Good to see always smug Sweden having some traffic problems too :D Makes me feel a little better about living in Brazil, though I think Heinz is a mite too optimistic.

Winter has done nothing, since it's Summer here, and as it always is with tropical countries, it brings huge amounts of rain, fucking up traffic. Buses face complete stagnation, subways become human antfarms, and I've been through 3 hours trips by bus to get home during rush hour, and I don't live very far from downtown São Paulo where I work.

Automobile industry has developed to a point that all that people think here when they begin working is getting their own car so they stop depending on the crappy transportation system, further clogging up our roads. Sure, on wikipedia, these buses, stations and subways look a bit nice, but only when not filled to the brim with human beings, and guess what? When it rains, it justs gets WORSE.

The rains rendered the train lines who take people to the eastern boroughs, the most populous ones, unusable one day. Everyone converged to the central station in the subway, the stupid bifurcation between North-South and West-East lines. Everyone depends on that nexus, and it failed utterly to cover the demands of an entire railway line. The place got so crowded that the station had to be closed. The entire platform was filled with people. I just laughed sadly and turned back, finding a bus line home who took me 3 long hours to return to home's safety. Water everywhere, traffic everywhere, rivers had flooded and invaded the margin avenues, so it was total chaos.

It's been more than a month with daily rains until early February, so I can safely say that Summer messed up things pretty badly here.
 
but only when not filled to the brim with human beings, and guess what? When it rains, it justs gets WORSE.
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If you live in São Paulo, you know thats not everyday like this.
And you cant say São Paulo's subway system is bad because of the loads of people in it. Most of subway system of world greatest cities are completely filled with people, and you can name london, tokyo, new york or any other city in the middle of those.
I commute everyday to work just with the metro system, and theres absolutely nothing of "crap" in it. Its just full of people as any other metro in the world.

And you cannot deny the expansion of the metro system. With the expansion, cames the fact that less people are going to thethe Central Station (Sé). You can say that the bus system is crap, but definetely, the subway isnt.
 
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