A good observation from previous threads: "Whenever utility cycling is discussed on the internet, suddenly everyone has to move their fridge 100 miles in the rain"
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.
It's amazing how people think skiing is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, yet think biking in the cold is somehow impossible.
As someone who doesn’t have a license or a car, but does bike a lot - there will be solutions.
I order my groceries delivered. When I needed to get my old bed recycled, I asked the second hand store and they came and picked it up. They weren’t interested in the broken mattress for it (obviously), so I contacted a moving company and they had it recycled for $40.
Now I get that that cost might be hard to swallow for some, but keep in mind that I don’t pay for my car, its insurance, the fuel, or maintenance, and it took less than five minutes for me to be done with the entire thing. All I had to do was open my front door and two burly men came and picked it up for me. I didn’t even have to wait at the recycling station.
Those $40 paid for themselves.
It’s also worth noting that I do live in the frozen north (not Canada, further north), where we don’t see the sun for half the year. I see people biking year round.
Yeah, it depends on the context. Is the thread saying "we need to build out far more cycling infrastructure"? If so, no argument.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars? Then people start bringing up the edge cases that still require cars.
You'd typically hear this in the context of Dutch-style city planning, where direct routes through cities are only available to cycles and buses, and only indirect routes are available to cars.
So cars and other vehicles such as ambulances, furniture-removal vans etc. can still drive to every house from the ring-road, but it is no longer convenient to get from one place to another within the same city by car (which is obviously the design, as it promotes cycling and bus use)
People who drive within the city and would be inconvenienced then suddenly discover a newfound interest in the rights of, for example, disabled people, as they search for counter-arguments.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars?
You say that as if those threads are actually a common thing, and not just a strawman accusation from the fevered dreams of car-brains.
Those who depend on cars would benefit too when they are the only ones in cars
See, this is why I'm convinced that Americans secretly love traffic congestion. Why else would they do vehemently oppose anything that takes cars off of the streets and highways, and out of their way?
I'm not even sure that I'm joking, anymore. It's important for humans to have rituals that symbolically bind us to a larger community, like eating a big meal (usually turkey) on Thanksgiving Day, right? It feels like drivers want everybody stuck in traffic jams, so that they can feel that their own frustrating commute has some greater meaning, like this is how it is, and we're all in it together. (Like the weather.) Those of us who escape the matrix just enrage them by proving that their effort is meaningless and dumb.
Anyway, just a random musing.
They don't understand the issue. Americans have been brainwashed for 80 years by the oil companies that car ownership is the epitome of freedom. Any policy that seeks to remove cars from the road is a policy that seeks to remove personal freedoms from their idiotic perspective.
Say this to anybody who will listen, please! I've been using it on my car guy friends, and they're receiving it loud and clear. They love the idea of having the roads all to themselves, many of the actual enthusiast types do anyways.
This is basically how I like to put it:
My sister can't move her feet at the ankle. She'll never drive unless we can afford a custom 50k car. She has a 3,000 dollar mobility scooter. We had to spend about a month mapping the city to figure out WHERE THE FUCK SHE COULD GET ON AND OFF THE SIDEWALK.
Edit: Let me elaborate further:
It was so bad, that if we didn't think ahead, we would have to go back a half a mile. I'm not joking. You ever seen those roads between neighborhoods with no turn offs? Better make sure that side walk ends with a ramp, otherwise, you have to go ALL the way back. You also can't lift the scooter, it's over 100lb. If you're reading this, please petition your town to add more ramps to the sidewalk.
My sister has to have every bone from her pelvis to her ankle broken, REGULARLY. They have to cut all of her muscles, stretch them, reconnect them, and then inject them with botox. They then set them in a cast. This is just so she can properly grow, due to cerebral paulsy. And then, just to rub dirt in the wound, we can't even use the sidewalk properly. We're surrounded by beautiful nature and trails. She doesn't get to experience that. Please petition your towns to add more ramps to the sidewalk. I'll get off my soap box.
We had to spend about a month mapping the city to figure out WHERE THE FUCK SHE COULD GET ON AND OFF THE SIDEWALK.
Wow. It even worse than my shithole.
Dude it gets worse. They installed decorative boulders on our sidewalk instead of adding ramps. The stones were SANDSTONE AND IMMEDIATELY ERODED.
It was pointless, got in the way, and cost tax payer money.
The boulders used to take up 1/3 of the walk way, so I'm happy they're being weatherd.
damn lisa really needs to shorten those slides for her presentation and start doing the talking herself
0 cars bad idea. Need less car, need more everything else.
A walkable city means everything is closer for everyone, so if you have mobility issues you can just use a slower, safer, more efficient vehicle like a scooter or a cart that still suits your needs since you don't have to go as far as to need a car.
People can only think in 100%s. They think it's either 100% car, 100% transit, or 100% bike. So you have to tell them you want them all. Currently we have cars, we need to add transit and bikes.
I've heard it said that Houston's annual transportation cost for total car-dependency is close to 20% of their budget.
NYC, which has the entire MTA plus a huge number of highways and still shocking amount of car dependency, is 10%.
Amsterdam with all of its trams and bike paths is closest to 4%.
Yet any resident of NYC or Houston will tell you it is fucking TERRIBLE driving in either of those cities. Meanwhile, Amsterdam is ranked one of the best cities for people who love to drive because its roads are maintained, safe, and aren't congested.
It's actually not possible to be 100% transit or 100% bike, outside of some weird Swiss vacation communities or Canadian island neighborhoods. But the more you invest in transit and bikeped, the more you address the actual cause of congestion and the more drivable your city gets. Even if you truly love and prefer driving, multimodal cities are still better. Downs-Thompson is inviolable.
Downs-Thompson is inviolable.
The simple truth that a lot of people don't understand. Cars simply require too much space that you can never possibly meet all the latent demand for car trips within a city, as doing so would mean bulldozing the entire city in the process. The only way to meet latent demand for transit is via an array of vastly more space-efficient means, e.g., public transit, walking, and biking.
Heck yeah! Me and my GF I feel like are a good example of this.
I use an escooter because I work from home, and my favorite grocery stores and dr office are within a mile. I'm also about 3 miles from a train station that goes up and down utah valley, so I see no reason for a car. I uber once every other month like when I needed to get something large to the post office.
My GF is a CNA that does free lancing. So it's not unusual for her to have to drive an hour to the middle of nowhere with a shift that ends/starts in the middle of the night. A car just makes sense for her.
But people like me using micromobility/public transit means there are less cars on the road, less cars taking up parking, and even reducing the price of cars.
A lot of people think of themselves as too good for public transportation.
Cause they live somewhere where public transit is treated as a last thought thing for "the poors". When public transit is designed as a method of moving people, rather than a last thought, it gets much wider adoption. Because it's freaking great to not have to drive.
In my first job i used to work for a property management company. The owner had her office in the lavish flat of her parents in an upper class area of the city. When the mother of her asked, how i make it to work and i answered by subway. Her answer was something like "I couldn't do that. It is always so dirty."
Fuck rich people.
There's a little old lady near where I used to live who drives up and down the country roads in her government-provided electric wheelchair every day. Everyone knows her.
On the one hand I think, "you go, girl!" but on the other hand, I feel like her life would be a lot easier if this town were more walkable/bikeable. She can't walk to ride a bike but what a great benefit it would be for her to live in a place like that.
You literally need a license to drive and be over legal age. Compared to that, everyone can cycle or use public transport.
I remember getting into this with my wife. She is into buses and those were black magic, I liked the subways. Took a few bus rides with her and she converted me. Both are great options with pros and cons.
Maybe the real one-size-fits-all solution is the car-dependent city planning we made along the way
/s
"Not everyone can walk or cycle"
The only response needed for that statement is the following video.