this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Fuck Cars
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Suddenly, all the north Canadians who live with snow storms 24/7 appear to comment how all the world infrastructure has to adapt to their specific needs.
What's ironic is my city, Montreal, is arguably the biggest cycling city in North America. Even in winter the bike lanes are filled with cyclists. Why? Turns out that all you need is good-quality bike infrastructure that you actually maintain in the winter and people will happily bike year-round.
Montréal : cycle year round.
Laval/Brossard/Kirkland/PET/Montréal Est/... : obviously it's impossible to cycle at any time ever and we must always drive.
Apparently all Canadians live in remote cabins several hours away from the nearest town, based on the "how can I live without a car" replies I've gotten over the years.
50 percent of canadians live below the 49th parallel. 90 percent live within 160 kms ~~(iirc) 20kms~~ of the border between canada and the usa
Canada has roughly 40 million people.
*Longest undefended border in the world
*Canada has more fresh water than any other country and almost 9% of Canadian territory is water; Canada has at least 2 million and possibly over 3 million lakes - that is more than all other countries combined
Just some contextual information for anyone who isnt familiar with canada reading your comment. Not directed at the comment i replied to, just thought it might be useful
That 90% is within 100 miles of the border, not 20km. And keep in mind that border is one of the longest on the planet. Not that it's a good reason to have cars (it takes days to drive between Toronto and Vancouver, I think a train would be a much better experience for something more efficient than a flight).
Thanks! wasnt sure about how close to the border will fix.
And because you mentioned the length of the border, ill also add another tidbit in the edit
Depending on how you count it can have infinite length
not necessarily infinite, length is quantized so when you get to planck length sized chunks you can declare a largest border length (at least, the planck length is the shortest distance we can measure)
This is way off topic, but I'm curious about the fresh water thing. Does that include frozen water, and how does Antarctica fit into that metric? I know Antarctica is a continent, but is it also a country? Is it multiple?
Edit: I return with knowledge!
Antarctica has no countries, but does have regions where certain other countries have "claimed". Also the info is pretty dated (late 80's I think), but there's a large portion that is totally unclaimed land entirely. Fun fact: this is the only large land area on the planet that's unclaimed by a country.
As for fresh water content: Antarctica holds about 70% of Earth's fresh water as ice. As a scale reference: If that all melted, it would be enough to raise the planet's sea levels by nearly 200 feet (~60 feet higher than the 2011 tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan).
Some day we are gonna answer a trivia question with this. Ill think of you when my turn comes.
Yes cottaging is an activity that most Canadians participate in. One of the benefits of having the most lakes of anywhere in the world.
21% of Canadians using a cottage annually means that every single Canadian must do every trip ever by car, obviously.
I'm sorry, do you expect the government to build a train to every cottage? Ridiculous /s
Not what I said, try arguing without putting words in people's mouths.
I mean, I wasn't even talking about cottaging, yet you insisted on bringing it into the conversation. You seem to want coverage for specific "edge cases" but I don't think you're open to any actual things that address those.
Solutions that cover a majority of use cases are better anyways. These edge cases are minor problems that aren't relevant to the majority of transportation needs.
There's a difference between "I have a cottage that I visit 2 times a year" and "I live in the middle of nowhere and can't possibly survive without a car!!" that a disproportionate number of people claim.
Over 80% of Canadians live in urban areas, yet much more than 20% seem to think they live in such a rural environment that lowering car usage is impossible.
And then it depends on the context of the conversation. There are countless threads of naiive people arguing that we can get rid of all cars, and when they do, people bring up the edge cases.
Going to a cottage once a year still requires a car.
Going to a cottage once a year doesn't require you own a car for the whole year.
In fact, if you only truly need a car a handful of times per year, it's vastly cheaper and less hassle to just rent it
Precisely. And if someone can't be convinced not to spend thousands of their own money on a transportation method in order to cover less than 1% of their trips, I don't think they can be convinced at all.
Okay, if you're going to keep arguing that, it's time for you to fucking cite some.
Go read the comments in any of the threads about the Waymo car being burned.
Citing something means "post a hyperlink to the specific comment you think is an example," not "vaguely send people off on a wild goose chase."
When I first kagied "cottaging", I got anonymous gay sex. Then I figured it was a Canada thing and found, "taking vacations to remote cabins during the summer." Please let me know if I have the wrong definition.
Our transportation system and an individual's personal transport should not be designed around solely less than one percent of trips they take a year. This is why car rentals exist.
Ohhh, they weren't talking about the sex in public toilets thing? That must be super embarassing when a Canadian visits the UK!
Sometimes it's both of those things.
I've never claimed that, but the edge cases are important to consider when you're trying to get people to give up their personal cars.
You'll forgive my confusion since you replied to a comment describing a good reason to own a car that most people don't have with a comment about a bad reason to own a car that many people have.
I say it's bad because there are alternatives to every family having a car specifically for the rare weekend trips they take a year
It's amazing how people think skiing is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, yet think biking in the cold is somehow impossible.
Skis are optimized to move efficiently on top of snow, while bicycle wheels are not.
This is one of the big reasons why good plowing is a key feature required for winter cycling in snowy climates. My city has been doing alright in this regard, and I've been able to continue cycling for some of my trips. Transit is so good here though that I use that over cycling while the weather is really bad.
Or snow compacting
Thats terrible argument. Find a better one if you want to help move people from thinking they need a car.
Making bad arguments for good causes does more harm than saying nothing at all.
All Canadiens live in the permafrost
The only thing you need to say back is "Oslo"
Its fucking ALL of non metro Canada dude, not just the North, and thanks for implying that we dont matter/dont exist. Transit infrastructure is NOT cost effective outside the Cities here, and we arent a country shy on taxes
Don't need to worry about taxes, cities pay for them.
How do you expect cities to pay for things without tax money? Bus drivers, Road Workers, Repair People, etc. All gotta eat
City taxes pay for your suburbian lifestyle.