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Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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I watched the video and it had a huuuge hole in its argument.
It basically said one of the key issues is snow removal, then conveniently doesn’t mention how Canada gets more 4X the amount of snow than the Netherlands… Canada doesn’t remove snow as often cause there is more of it…
I live in Montréal. Commute by bike daily. And the city removes snow just fine. Even from bike lanes.
I had a similar experience in Toronto for the years I lived there. But Montréal is better at clearing bike paths.
The video points out that Toronto is not a good biking experience in the winter. Your probably the minority in therms of tolerating snow on roads.
Montreal has higher taxes allowing them to spend more. The whole small government philosophy is the crux of the issue and it effects a lot of things that would make this problem better like public transportation.
True about Toronto. But it's also pointing out how Toronto gets much less snow than most of the rest of Canada (apart from maybe Vancouver). But it draws a lot of comparisons with Oulu, where it snows much more than Toronto (and Montréal) but they actually do snow removal well.
Montréal's forte is the separated bike baths that zigzag across the city, creating a safe artery. And I'm not talking about Bloor, College/Gerrard or Davenport level painted stripes with broken barriers. But actual two-lane paths.
Toronto could have the same, at least as an artery kind, connecting the East and North East via Don Valley and Taylor Creek, West along the Humber. Alas there's no winter maintenance for some reason on these pathways.
Maybe things will change under Olivia.
No I do agree that the video does provide a good argument that it is possible to fix. It’s pretty clear that with good, well maintained paths that more people will bike.
What I doubt is convincing Canadians that we need to spend a lot more building and cleaning up paths.
The video literally says it’s “laziness” whereas big infrastructure spending isn’t not attractive to North Americans. And their example of, “this one city figured it out” is not as convincing as “all of Europe figured it out”.
I remember vaguely an article from a few decades ago that claimed Montreal was the only Canadian city that at least tried to do snow clearing right.
Saskatoon, for example, is abysmal and always has been.
I once heard that property taxes would have to increase by a lousy $50/year to bring Saskatoon snow clearing up to Montreal standards. That's when I finally realized that governments at all levels, as they are currently organized, are basically useless when it comes to figuring out how to best serve the population.
The video is about how people in Finland still cycle.
It used Finland as the best case scenario. The argument is not as strong when your comparing it with the best case. The average case would be the rest of Europe and they don’t get as much snow.
Your original argument is that Canada gets more snow than the Netherlands which is why it's cycling infrastructure isn't ploughed as much / isn't as good. The video actually shows that Finland does deal with snow and many still bike.
Yet now you say Canada, a country that's known to be cold and have lots of snow should be compared to the EU average instead of similarly cold countries. Why shouldn't we compare Canada to Finland?
Yeah I actually made a mistake originally, I got the locations mixed up, my apologies.
But I personally don’t think Finland is a big enough example, at just 5 million, it’s a different ball game.
Having said that, I fully support my country (Canada) spending more money on infrastructure including better bike paths, but I have doubts it would work as well as Finland, we have way more suburbs.
I had this big comment, but just as I posted it my internet died. TLD±RW
I agree suburbs are hard to redevelop, we refocus cities to work for the people living in them, give suburbanites trains to cities and restrict cars. Which frees up space to allow for better winter cycle infrastructure.
Yeah I agree with that. I think we are way more behind in terms of good trains and public transportation. Better bike paths would help but if people still need cars to commute from an hour away cause there is no train and houses are expensive downtown, your city centre would still be a giant parking lot.