In Toronto shared paths are limited to 20Kph, which seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
If close calls or accidents were happening, we should study the causes. Is it due to bikes going faster than it is safe? Due to pedestrians walking in the left/middle of the path? Due to poor visibility around tight corners? Each of those problems have different solutions.
We barely study the cause of accidents on our roadways in Canada and refuse to believe we could design them safer and instead consider fatal interactions with cars as “accidents”. I doubt governments are willing to study this in active transportstion paths given they barely want to fund the paths anyway and most municipalities still consider bicycle gutters as safe.
I have a disability that would benefit from a car, in the immediate short term. Sure I’d be more able to get around on bad days, but being less active makes everything significantly worse. I’d likely end up bed bound again.
Cycling and walking, even when I’m barely able to, dramatically increases my quality of life. It’s one of the reasons I chose an area with a lot of isolated walking/cycling trails
This is the most BS governement we had over the past 20 years. Legault doesnt even pretend like he gives a single fuck about environnement. He would build a nuclear central in the middle of Québec city if he beleive that would give him more votes. I hate that stupid governement with passion. I’m still pretty confident nothing will happened with that project, but why even keep talking about it.
A nuclear power station in the middle of Quebec city would actually be environmentally beneficial so I don’t know what you were trying to prove there but it didn’t work…
Lol. I’m not entirely against nuclear, but if you think a nuclear central in the middle of any widely populated city is a good idea (especially the capital of a province with the potential for 100% renewable energy from hydro, wind, solar), I suggest you reevaluate your knowledge on the subject. Or maybe join the CAQ.
Nuclear power is extremely safe, especially in a zone where there’s very little seismic activity and it’s clean energy.
Getting your energy from a source that’s not thousands of km away is also much safer as it relies on much less infrastructure.
Generating power for the major cities without needing to transport it from the northern part of the province would allow us to send the surplus to the USA to help decarbonise their production and since it’s not for local use it might as well come from a source that’s more at risk of shutting down because of wildfires or, in the long run, climate change.
And I’ll continue voting left, thank you very much.
All right, as long as we’re talking Fukushima level safety, I’m on board. Lets ditch hydroelectricty and build a nuclear central in the middle of north America’s oldest city
Yeah, if you can’t see the difference between the locations then I guess this conversation isn’t worth continuing… Anti-nuclear “greens” are killing the movement’s credibility…
Edit: Looking back at your first comment “most bs government in 20 years”, guess you’re not very old to not remember the Liberals that got elected 20 years ago!
C’est vrai que c’est pas pareil! Ça remonte à quand le dernier tremblement de terre au Québec déjà!? Oh la semaine passée vraiment? Anyway je suis prêt à prendre le risque, de toute façon j’habite pas à Québec donc c’est pas mon problème.
Pour mon 1er commentaire, je maintiens que c’est le pire gouvernement depuis “au moins” 20 ans, oui. Pire que les libéraux de Charest, oui. C’est un parti de division : catholique vs les autres, Montréal vs le reste de la province, québécois de souche vs immigrants, propriétaire vs locataires, entrepeneurs vs salariés. Ce parti ne fait qu’accentuer les divisons entre les québécois, a des fins purement électoralistes. Et je sais pas pourquoi mon âge t’intéresse, mais il y a 20 ans, j’étais déjà en age de voter et non, c’est pas moi qui a fait élire les libéraux, ni le pq d’ailleurs. Tu chercheras l’UMP.
C’était quoi la magnitude déjà? Combien il y en a au Québec vs au Japon? C’est correct, je comprends, c’est dur d’admettre qu’on comprend pas de quoi on parle 😉
Lol, c’est vrai que les japonais sont un peu stupides, toi tu l’aurais assurément prédit cet évènement imprévisible, avec ton intelligence supérieure qui trouve bonne l’idée de sacrer une centrale dans le milieu d’une ville de 500k habitants (je peux pas croire qu’on discute sérieusement de cette joke-là), et ton expertise en nucléaire probablement appuyée sur un cégep en science-humaine et un couple de vidéos youtube. Mais sérieusement, je t’en pris, explique-moi: Comme le nucléaire est une source magique et infini d’énergie sans conséquence négativ, pourquoi est-ce qu’il n’y a pas déjà une centrale nucléaire dans toutes les villes? Complot organisé par les “mauvais” écologistes qui savent pas de quoi ils parlent, partenariat secret entre drags-queen-capitalistes et le parti libéral, scientifiques corrompus? Et pour les déchets, on va les mettre dans la cour au chalet de tes parents je suppose? C’est 100% sécuritaire, non? Ou ben on les ship dans un pays en voie de développement?
“No one is against secure bike paths,” Spanoudakis said in a recent interview. “The point of contention is why does this need to be done with the removal of 250 parking spots, which (is) going to impact the quality of life in the neighbourhood?”
Spanoudakis distanced herself from the acts of vandalism targeting bike paths, but said the borough’s plan to eliminate parking for bike paths has polarized the community. “We clearly feel that we are being pitted against the needs of the cyclists and it shouldn’t be that.”
Cyclists subsidize motorists. Cyclists pay more into the system than they cost, motorists pay far far less. The needs of cyclists should always come before the needs of motorists. That is just basic decency and fairness.
I would argue that’s overly simplistic. In Melbourne, where I’m from, cycling infrastructure is passable in the inner city suburbs where house prices average well over a million dollars very high, and effectively only available to wealthier people. The outer suburbs, where there is no cycling infrastructure and limited public transport but affordablish housing, life is such that cars are necessary.
In cases such as this, motorists subsidizing cyclists is the rich being subsidized by the poor. I would far prefer a system where cyclists (and public transit) are subsidized by the rich, and longer term plans are implemented to remove the mandate of cars to the working poor, which in my example would mean current cyclists funding current motorists (with an intention to convert them to former motorists).
Relative to motor vehicles cyclists cause zero damage to roads. All pay taxes. Motorists are therefore subsidized by cyclists.
Melbourne’s bike network is extensive and goes through many areas of the city. Not just to million dollar homes.
Many people ride bikes because they can’t afford cars.
Suburbia is further subsidized by cities and North American suburbs should never have existed in the way that they do.
Everything about your logic is backwards and focused on car drivers and suburbanites experiencing no discomfort during a transition to sustainability while all discomfort is placed on others.
Relative to motor vehicles cyclists cause zero damage to roads. All pay taxes. Motorists are therefore subsidized by cyclists.
This is not at all in dispute.
Melbourne’s bike network is extensive and goes through many areas of the city. Not just to million dollar homes.
I don’t agree with this. The inner suburbs have good bike lanes, places like pakenham or cragieburn do not. I admit the million dollar number was a bad way of phrasing what I actually mean (and distracts because it’s a wrong claim), which is unaffordable. Yes you can safely ride from like glenroy which is well connected with bike lanes, but family homes in glenroy exceed $800k which is ludicrous for a low income family.
Many people ride bikes because they can’t afford cars.
Absolutely. Many others drive cars because they can’t afford to live close enough to the city for riding to be safe and practical. Different housing needs drive different outcomes here.
Suburbia is further subsidized by cities and North American suburbs should never have existed in the way that they do.
Absolutely agree. However they do and a conscious, deliberate effort is needed over time to correct this.
Everything about your logic is backwards and focused on car drivers and suburbanites experiencing no discomfort during a transition to sustainability while all discomfort is placed on others.
A lot of your points I unreservedly agree with, so if you feel they have anything to do with my logic then your contradicting yourself. In your whole.paragraph there’s only a single point that I don’t agree with.
I don’t see how this addresses my point so allow me to restate it. When there is a conflict or compromise over limited resources between a vulnerable class of travelers that pay more than their own way and a privileged class that enjoy public subsidy, the former class should clearly receive priority. What is the conflict you are trying to highlight, where everyone’s needs could not be met if Melbourne cared to try?
Right, your statement that currently cyclists subsidized driver’s isn’t being disputed, nor is the fact that cars cost more to service associated infrastructure (as for some reason other replies are arguing).
My point is that in many places, cycling is only an option for the wealthy due to a lack of infrastructure in poorer areas. Melbourne could meet everyone’s needs if it cared to try, however it currently does not, which is to the detriment of the the less privileged and that is the point I am making.
i detest signs like these with such a burning passion, they show that people want their streets to be safe but cannot be arsed to actually get them to be made safer, so they put up a sign as if that’s going to do jack shit.
If you want people to drive safely, get the local government to traffic calm the street, if nothing else it’s common for there to be a procedure for getting permission to place some flower boxes on the street to make your own traffic calming.
I’d go even farther than that: I’d argue that those signs are an admission of incompetence by the engineer who approved their installation.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the path towards improving the situation is to directly target the engineers themselves by going after the license of those who fail to design streets appropriately for all users. Even if they follow established government guidelines or industry best practices, that shouldn’t be a defense because the guidelines and best practices are wrong to begin with.
It's not clear to me where the people who are all for bike lanes but also want the parking spaces to stay think the space for bike lanes is going to come from. We aren't Time Lords, we can't just fold a few extra feet of space into there. So what is it that they actually want?
No bike lanes. But they know they can’t say that, so they hem and haw about “careful cautious progress” that looks very suspiciously like no progress at all. They talk about compromise, but their idea of compromise is they get everything they want, and everyone else just has to work around that.
This video is about racism, but the same general points apply to urbanism and car dependency.
This timestamp til about 20mins (17:45 to 20:00) names a bunch of specific examples (of racism), and explains the thought process behind dismissing them as examples, which again, very much applies to urbanism and car dependency.
(Also the entire video series is good, but not quite relevant here)
Basically, they don’t want anything to actually change. They have no problem admitting that symptoms are problems, but fixing the core issue would require admitting that they’re part of that core issue, and they’d have to change. And they don’t want to.
yeah, i think some people go too fast in crowded areas of mixed use paths. but that’s just my opinion, are people actually getting injured?
i don’t think so, but i admittedly don’t know for sure. my guess is motor vehicles kill more people per mile than fast bicycles injure or kill on shared paths.
City’s should look at what the Finnish people are doing, IMO they seem to do it very well. Here is a great video for anyone interested in cycling pathways and how much thought goes into them.
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