Canada needs hundreds of thousands of kilometres in new bike paths and rapid transit lines.
Electric cars are still cars.
Edit: in hindsight, this was a super polarizing statement and I meant it mostly as hyperbole. Ultimately I want to see fewer cars on the road and have them replaced with bicycles, pedestrians and transit, but to do so means not just building new infrastructure along side existing roads but instead redesigning cities to the point where cars are no longer feasible.
That works for urban areas, but so much of Canada is rural. If I biked to work I’d need to leave like 3 hours before work started. And that doesn’t even address winter travel, good luck using your bike with a couple feet of snow.
So while foot/bike paths are important, we can’t just stop all car use. And EVs are much better if a vehicle is required, especially if powered by renewables.
Hot take: Most people who live in rural places absolutely shouldn’t and we’d be better off societally if they’d all move to urban areas or densify their area in order to urbanize.
Some rural people are fine. My uncle lives about 20km outside the nearest town. He’s almost self-sufficient, grows or hunts most of his food, uses solar for electricity, real retire-to-a-cabin-in-the-woods type stuff. He goes into town maybe once every 1-2 months for supplies. That’s alright by me.
My parents, however, live a few kilometers down the road from him. They both work in town, and drive there separately more often than not because of conflicting schedules. Even on their days off, they’ll go to town for errands, or social events, or whatever. Sometimes they’ll do the 20km drive to town and back multiple times a day. If they do it three times, that’s 120km. This is ridiculous, harmful and unsustainable. I don’t have any statistics on this, but I’d be willing to bet most “rural” folks are like my parents. They’re actually urbanites who just happen to live rurally. If over half your life happens in town, you should live in town. Whatever reasons people have for wishing to live in a rural place should not outweigh the huge environmental cost of having to drive everywhere all the time. Not to mention the massive amount of resources and subsidies necessary to maintain car-centric infrastructure compared to literally any other type of transit.
The transition from rural to urban has been happening for the last 100 years and it’s going to keep happening.
But we can’t just ignore the 15-20% of the population who are currently rural and act like they can just move into a city and it would solve all problems.
If someone lives 20km outside of a city, they are barely rural.
I appreciate the desire to have better public transit whereever we can, but ignoring the existing realities isn’t helpful.
Canada needs hundreds of thousands of kilometres in new bike paths and rapid transit lines.
Electric cars are still cars.
Edit: in hindsight, this was a super polarizing statement and I meant it mostly as hyperbole. Ultimately I want to see fewer cars on the road and have them replaced with bicycles, pedestrians and transit, but to do so means not just building new infrastructure along side existing roads but instead redesigning cities to the point where cars are no longer feasible.
That works for urban areas, but so much of Canada is rural. If I biked to work I’d need to leave like 3 hours before work started. And that doesn’t even address winter travel, good luck using your bike with a couple feet of snow.
So while foot/bike paths are important, we can’t just stop all car use. And EVs are much better if a vehicle is required, especially if powered by renewables.
Hot take: Most people who live in rural places absolutely shouldn’t and we’d be better off societally if they’d all move to urban areas or densify their area in order to urbanize.
Some rural people are fine. My uncle lives about 20km outside the nearest town. He’s almost self-sufficient, grows or hunts most of his food, uses solar for electricity, real retire-to-a-cabin-in-the-woods type stuff. He goes into town maybe once every 1-2 months for supplies. That’s alright by me.
My parents, however, live a few kilometers down the road from him. They both work in town, and drive there separately more often than not because of conflicting schedules. Even on their days off, they’ll go to town for errands, or social events, or whatever. Sometimes they’ll do the 20km drive to town and back multiple times a day. If they do it three times, that’s 120km. This is ridiculous, harmful and unsustainable. I don’t have any statistics on this, but I’d be willing to bet most “rural” folks are like my parents. They’re actually urbanites who just happen to live rurally. If over half your life happens in town, you should live in town. Whatever reasons people have for wishing to live in a rural place should not outweigh the huge environmental cost of having to drive everywhere all the time. Not to mention the massive amount of resources and subsidies necessary to maintain car-centric infrastructure compared to literally any other type of transit.
The transition from rural to urban has been happening for the last 100 years and it’s going to keep happening.
But we can’t just ignore the 15-20% of the population who are currently rural and act like they can just move into a city and it would solve all problems.
If someone lives 20km outside of a city, they are barely rural.
I appreciate the desire to have better public transit whereever we can, but ignoring the existing realities isn’t helpful.