Why Norway Is Insanely Well Designed

Why Norway Is Insanely Well Designed

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Video by:
Oliver Franke
Research & Script:
Oliver Franke, Emanuele Martinelli
Edit & Animations:
Oliver Franke

[Adam-wrkn]

norwegian here. the fact that there are so many airports and flight traffic is exactly what doesen't make norway "incredibly well designed", or "sustainable/green" . The train network doesn't even connect together the second and third largest cities, bergen and trondheim, with a direct route, instead taking a detour all the way down to oslo.

[headphones]

Video: "Why Norway is insanely well designed"
Norwegians: "Hahahaha!… Wait, you’re serious?"

[navsnylter]

As a norwegain with great interest in infrastructure, Norway has a massive problem on its hands. Railway, the railway between the two biggest cities (bergen-oslo) is PACKED, its so packed that passenger trains are slower today than in 1975. And no money is being allocated to rail (outside of Oslo the capital) even tho the demand is SUPER high and a lot of people want to use train instead of plane. This is a very annoying situations spesially because we pollute so much with our plane activity.

[erikrathesondb]

The reason why we have 4 of the top 10 busiest domestic air routes in the EU is largely due to the fact our rail network is so heavily neglected. Oslo is well-connected by rail, the rest of the country isn’t. The existing railway lines’ service is so slow (and often more expensive than the flight) that they don’t offer a suitable alternative to flying. If we bothered to invest more in rail we could easily reduce the demand for the flights.

[adeclutteredlife]

Sounds truly amazing when looked at from the outside and I'm very grateful to be Norwegian, but it's not as magical as you make it sound. As someone else pointed out, flying is so common because the railroad is neglected and expensive. I've travelled lots between Bergen, Oslo and Trondheim. Between Trondheim and Bergen I would never travel by train anyway, because it's via Oslo and takes 16 ish hours, plane takes 50 minutes.
Bergen-Oslo or Oslo-Trondheim I would chose train if it wasn't for constantly risking delays, having to change to a bus for half the route and it being expensive. It's less stress than flying, especially with kids and doesn't take much more time if we factor in travel to and from airport and the other time consuming parts of flying. We usually end up driving instead. Drove Trondheim-Bergen and back this summer, 12 hours each way.
The electricity we produce is mostly sold to other countries and then we have to buy it back at a higher price.. More and more services are being privatized, both lowering quality and raising costs, making it inaccessible to many people. Poverty is on the raise.

[bojantenja]

Just try to live in north Norway for a month, and then revisit your video.
It cost me more to travel from Kirkenes to Oslo, than from Oslo to New York.

To travel to hospital, because of living on other side of fjord, i need more than 2 hours of driving during sommer, and in winter, roads are often closed.

[atluxity]

it is a myth that Norway supposedly was so poor before it hit oil. It found oil in 1969. Norway by then had comparable GPD per capital to the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and Austria. If you go far enough back, everyone was poor.

[Ramrol]

As someone who live in Norway along that route. Would be nice if they also built a railroad at the same time that follows the new roads. It would be such a missed oppurtunity to not do it.

[Andy-hrkf]

Big spin going on here. Airports are needed in part because the road and rail systems outside of Oslo aren't particularly good. By the same logic you could say canada has an insanely good transport system because so many fly latidudinally across the country.

[quuaaarrrk]

8:00 Woah, they did that all within 1960? That is impressive.

[bloody_fool]

I'll call it "Insanely Well Designed" when they merge their train and buss stations. Looking at Hønefoss and Gol here with a 10 and 30 minute hike between the stations respectively...

[-narratornorht--]

Norway's amazing and interconnected infrastructure makes driving through Swedish to get from North to South faster and cheaper than driving through Norwegian roads. On top of this, domestic flights are much more expensive than flying internationally.

[Carlium]

Above the polar circle, nothing is really "well-connected", there's even places without road connection, and the roads go in and out of the fjords instead of crossing them.
The railway is nonexistent, and ferries have to stay put because of a slight breeze across the fjord.

[theostemannen]

Rogfast is being built under Boknafjorden further South. Between Stavanger and Haugesund.

[DanBanan]

"The Norwegians have mastered the craft..."
"roads in Norway are equally impressive..."
"norway is so well designed and efficient because its peculiarities are integrated into one cohesive and organic system"
"...is done with great attention to sustainability and environment protection"
"Norway is the top producer of electricity per capita in the world"

Really? I'm no scientist, it just...doesn't seem that way.

[trygveevensen]

I don't think I've ever watched a video about my own country that I've related so little to, lol

Our transportation infrastructure outside of Oslo is bad, and unless you live in a city you'll need a car to get around. Our rail system is expensive, crowded and too small, and yet all our politicians care about is building new roads

[robertkirchner]

Norway is insanely well designed because Slartybartfast is a genius.
He won an award, you know.

[ungesalsa]

Rogfast is not even close to Bergen. It starts in Stavanger (technically in Randaberg but it's counted as the same city according to the Norwegian bureau of statistics) and goes across Boknafjorden in Rogaland fylke. The current longest undersea road tunnel is already in Stavanger and is a part of this same project, connecting the area called Ryfylke with Jæren. Also it's not scheduled to open by 2026 anymore, new approximation is 2031. They started to build it in 2018 but after spending a couple of billion NOK they figured it would be too expensive and used almost 4 years to decide if they should continue or not, luckily they decided to go ahead with the project.

[maqima]

I'm VERY glad you mentioned that Yes we might use 98% renewable energy, But we are huuuge on oil. It's kind of hypocritical of us to expect others to do the same as us, while we make money on other countries inability to go green.
This has bothered me for a few years, because we looove to praise our own country up here. I hate it. But we could do worse at the same time. I'm merely trying to hold my country responsible.

[sinxcosx]

I've lived in both Oslo and Bergen, and roads in Norway are far from impressive by nordic standards. You only have to travel across the border to Sweden and the quality of roads noticeably increases (potholes, maintenance, plowing, size of lanes, sidewalks etc.). People where I lived were always very unhappy about the state of roads in their area. I think you need more hands on sources for videos like this and not just look at numbers.