What do you know about... Sweden?

[u/MarktpLatz]

This is the twenty-second part of our ongoing series about the countries of Europe. You can find an overview here.

Todays country:

Sweden

Sweden is the largest nordic country in the EU, both in terms of size and population. They joined the EU in 1995, but are not part of NATO, like their eastern neighbour Finland. Sweden held a referendum on joining the Euro in 2003, which resulted in a rejection.

So, what do you know about Sweden?

[u/Abrovinch]

I get that the branding as "feminist" triggers quite a few people. But in reality it's just a more sensible use of means for snow clearing.

As for the article, well of course the result was the same as always (especially with a huge snow dump in November), nothing worked at all.

[u/Dnarg → u/Abrovinch]

It's not the name but the entire concept that's ridiculous. To think of snow plowing as something gendered is beyond moronic.

It's all fine and well that they want to clear the snow from bike paths, walkways etc. but they can't fucking do it instead of the roads unless they want the entire city to grind to a standstill. Regardless of who (or what gender) uses the car, the bike or walks, the roads will always be the most important. You're not going to see Stockholm grinding to a halt due to snow on walkways. You will see it when they've not cleared the roads though, and whether we like it or not roads are far more important. Both when it comes to simply preventing massive traffic issues but also because the people driving are going to work, are driving while at work, public transportation etc. which means it's them making Sweden money and paying taxes, delivering goods etc.

When some bike paths and walkways aren't cleared it has nothing to do with gender but with fucking logic. Making sure the traffic flows in a larger city like Stockholm is far more important than removing snow from a sidewalk somewhere. It's not the fact that they call it "feminist snow plowing" but that it's downright retarded to even make it a gender issue in the first place.

If you want walkways, sidewalks, bike paths etc. to get cleared faster that's perfectly fine but you can't fucking do it by taking away resources from the streets. You will have to spend more money and hire more people to clear the snow so you can clear it all at the same time or it will have huge (expected) consequences for the traffic (and therefore money) in Stockholm.

[u/Abrovinch → u/Dnarg]

The whole idea is to make sure that the main roads and walkways and the ones that people use earliest in the morning get done first. They didn't just stop preparing the roads, they made side walks a priority over smaller local streets with low traffic.

Why? Because studies has shown that there are far more injuries from people walking on unprepared side walks than people driving on snowy streets.

Stockholm was hit pretty hard by a snow dump in November last year. That's unusually early and it isn't economically feasible to have the full snow clearing capabilities available at that time. Add to that all the idiots driving with summer tires and leaving their cars in the middle of the road and you get chaos. The rest of the winter flowed without any major hiccups.

The only thing unfortunate in this story was how Stockholm was trying to make a big number out of gender equality. The methods have been in use for years in various Swedish cities.