Cities That Are Getting It Right

The cities doing urban mobility well in 2025 are not doing it because they have better technology. They're doing it because they made consistent policy choices over decades and didn't reverse them when they became politically inconvenient.

Oslo is the clearest example on EVs. Norway's EV penetration — over 90% of new car sales — didn't happen because Norwegian consumers are environmentally enlightened. It happened because the Norwegian government introduced EV incentives in the 1990s and maintained them consistently for thirty years: no purchase tax on EVs, free parking, free tolls, access to bus lanes. When EVs were expensive and limited, these incentives made them cost-competitive with ICE vehicles. When EVs became cheap enough to compete without subsidies, Norway gradually reduced the incentives. The steady, predictable policy environment let manufacturers plan production, let charging infrastructure investments have a return horizon, and let consumers plan purchases. The EV transition in Norway looks inevitable in retrospect because the policy commitment was unusually consistent.

Singapore's approach to cars in general is informative even for EV advocates who want to increase rather than reduce car ownership. Singapore caps the total number of vehicles allowed on the road through Certificate of Entitlement auctions — the right to own a car costs more than the car itself. This makes driving expensive by design, which funds excellent public transit. The result: one of the highest public transit mode shares of any city outside of Japan, excellent road quality, and zero congestion. The lesson isn't "do what Singapore does" — the political economy is specific to Singapore — but "managing total vehicle numbers is more effective than managing any individual technology choice."

Amsterdam and Copenhagen have made cycling infrastructure a genuine priority for decades. Cyclists in these cities use separated infrastructure rather than painted bike lanes, with grade-separated crossings and priority signaling. The modal share for cycling in Amsterdam is around 32%. This didn't happen because Dutch people are uniquely prone to cycling; it happened because the road infrastructure was restructured to make cycling genuinely faster, safer, and more convenient than driving for most urban trips.

Shanghai's metro system — expanded from 6 lines in 2005 to over 20 lines now covering most of the urban area — shows what urban rail investment at scale looks like. The metro handles over 12 million trips per day. Combined with China's high-speed rail network connecting cities, Shanghai residents can move between districts and between cities with a reliability and frequency that no US city can match. This happened through sustained public investment and centralized planning capacity, which is obviously not directly replicable everywhere, but the outcome — urban mobility infrastructure that actually handles the load — is worth noting.

The pattern across successful cases: consistent policy commitment, willingness to make cars less convenient rather than just making alternatives slightly better, and investment in physical infrastructure rather than just apps and platforms. Technology helps at the margins. The fundamentals are still political and institutional.

Cities That Are Getting It Right

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