One thing I know for sure is NO ONE can travel by bike during Montreal's winter (the city this footage was taken from). Montreal's winter is -30 Celsius, 3ft of snow and 2 inches of ice on every surface for 3 to 6 months a year.
@@Not.a.bird.Personis this sarcasm? Montreal plows a network of main bike lanes and does have a lot of winter cycling. Although I believe the bike share "bixbi bikes" are put away in the winter.
@@hollylockhart9423 ''Montreal plows a network of main bike lanes and does have a lot of winter cycling.'' Non priority roads in the city can take up to a week or more to be plowed... Even if a couple lanes were plowed, that's a small minority of cases and it completely gloss over the fact that biking in the winter on average is just very dangerous in Montreal. This is a complete non answer.
@@Not.a.bird.Person Montreal winters ain't that bad anymore. Snowy/icy weather only lasts 2-3 months nowadays. Ice and snow is non-issue on city streets, It's the sidewalks that are slippery. -30 celcius? Only if you look at the wind chill temperature and even then, it's quite a rare occurrence (a few times per year at most). Winter biking is normal in many northern cities of Europe. It will soon be the same in Montreal.
@@The_Monolith Ok... so just because the really bad stuff is 2-3 months of not being able to bike safely we should still push for the ubiquitous adoption of vehicles that are a varying degree of unsafe to unusable for those months and ignore the lack of usability of like half some of the streets involved for this amount of time when parking is a varying degrees of hell everywhere in the city? That sounds like perfectly sound engineering to me... As for Europre, people really need to stop comparing Canada to Europe... Europe is 17x denser as a region compared to Canada on average. The average distance between capital cities in Canada is the size of many European countries... sometimes combined. Canada is neither like Europe or anywhere close to it. Most big cities in Europe have another big city in every direction just 30-60 minutes away from them.
What difference does that make a car? If youre too old. You cant drive. And if you are disabled. You cant drive too. So what is the argument there? I dont get it.
@@TheSegert If you are unable to drive or bike, you are still old enough to be driven around. The problem is almost always how to get into and out of transportation, when urban planners did not consider mobility challenged/visually impaired passengers. - Walking across live lanes to get to a middle island on the street for a bus? - Having no drop off spot cause of badly planned bike lanes? They actually take that sort of thing into account in Amsterdam. Montréal? Not so much. Heck, you would think they would prioritize snow clearing of sidewalks and residential streets around schools. Nope
@@tommyshanks4198I live on a street with a primary school at the the end of the block. Our sidewalks are always cleared first. The pedestrian/bike paths are cleared too. Montreal could definitely do more to help the visually impaired and others with disabilities. One way to start is to elect these people to the city and municipal councils. It worked in Vancouver, especially after they elected visually impaired city councillor and a quadriplegic mayor.
That saying, “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression" strongly applies to this. Changes for mobility options other than cars will happen in time because they are better for more people.
It's simply demented entitled boomers and their mob mentality - our way, no discussion, be part of the crowd, do as you were told, and dare you be anyhow different - religion, skin colour, music, cloth, relations, hair color - they will crucify you as a witch and heretic.
Except often these bike paths often make things better for everyone. They keep bikes out of roads for cars and off sidewalks were pedestrians are and were children play. This is just "change is bad"
Assuming that old people cannot use a bicycle is by itself pretty ageist. Here in the Netherlands I frequently see a large portion of all cyclists in some areas being seniors.
Heh, my ~72 year old boss (trucking company here in northern Germany) drives to the company's location every Saturday for various reasons (normal business is only during the week, but he still does some stuff on Saturdays) and is currently under doctor's orders to use his bicycle for those Saturday trips 😄😊 So much for that "old people cannot use a bicycle" idiocy... 🤪
Most ppl suicidal enough to use the German Bicycle infrastructure are old ppl here. I cycle too but i walk most places because with my bicycle I'm forced to use the same roads as East-Germans that have a Mindset similar to those ppl in the Church(and sadly a bunch of Nazis as well) regardless of Age but like to "teach lessons" by almost murdering you with their car. All the fun stuff like Passing to close, passing then Brake checking, swerving towards you and of course completely ignoring you etc. I have my Bike for a few months now and I can count on one hand the ppl that even acknowledged my existence and paid proper attention to me ( hings like actually making Space for me in narrow points where I by law would have right of way, most ppl just drive straight at you with a slightly Braindead expression and then complain when you stand in front of them with nowhere to go)
Every summer here (Finland) I play the game of how long it takes until I see an old man driving a bike around without a shirt. You would be surprised by how often that happens.
As someone who primarily rides and has limited access to a car. Sometimes it isn't the journey but it's the load or the passenger etc. but the general point of people driving distances that it's easier to walk drives me mad as well
@@MikeBrown-dk7orI apparently have neighbours like that in Germany. One morning I was on the way to the next bakery by bike (about 500m). And someone on the other side of the street was driving out of his driveway without looking in both directions. Had I not stopped, even though I had right of way, he’d have had me on hood. Guess where I met that oblivious carbrain again? At the bakery. I was fuming inside.
Ill sure take my car to a 700m trip to the grocery store with two kids in diapers, summer or winter. You guys really think you're making the world better by riding a pedal bike?
I am disabled. Outside of the house, I use either my wheelchair or my handbike. Things that reduce my mobility are construction sites where accessibility wasn´t part of the consideration when providing alternate routes, bins on sidewalks of busy streets, greenery next to sidewalks that is growing over de sidewalk making it too narrow, lack of transit options, lack of short routes without busy trafic I can´t navigate when I have brain fog. For routes that are too long, not accessible enough and don´t have transit options, I need to arrange someone to drive me. Bike lanes tend to make my life a lot less complicated.
I am a disabled Dutchie. I cannot walk more than 200 m and I cannot ride a bicycle anymore. I need a car. But that does not mean I am against cycle paths. Both should be possible. Car and cyclists. I used to cycle everything within the city limits (unless I had to carry a heavy or voluminous load). Now I can't anymore, I am very happy with the parking spaces and roads for cars. You get my point, real freedom is that the infrastructure is able to facilitate both driving and cycling.
@@ronaldderooij1774 we are all envious of infrastructure there. Here in North America, they paint lines on a road shared with trucks and call it a bike lane. Safe it is not.
I was riding the American River trail in Sacramento, CA a while back and meet a group of Russian men who had lost their legs in combat and were riding 3-wheeled hand bikes. I was amazed at their power and speed. It was so cool to ride with them - even though they left me in the dust!
I grew up in a school district where I could walk to school all the way from K-12. It absolutely boggles my mind that there are schools that are designed to be impossible to walk or bike to, and that parents think this is a good thing.
Narrowing the street also slows down traffic so that's a plus in a school zone. It also probably drives these people nuts when they see cyclists ride past them unimpeded by traffic.
Bet they want the kids to Ride in a circle in the paths around the schools. Like a gym class thing.. But Really sounds like It's more then bikes Almost like the need help and hugs
I second this, I remember back in elementary school it wasn't until the seventh grade that I started to be more observant and see that the same kids would always bike past me while I walked to school and wow, there's a bike rack at the front entrance of my school LOL. After that, biking became my main mode of transportation, but if there had been clear cycling infrastructure in my neighbourhood, I may have started biking sooner (and make things safer). Now that I'm older, I've realize how biking is seen as a recreational activity and not a mode of transportation in most North American neighbourhoods which is sad
When they tell stories like that I always have to wonder about the context like just maybe they gave her a one finger salute because she was obstructing a designated bike path? We will never know.
Yes. It was like a whiny 8 year old went to an adult meeting. The old "someone misbehaved (if you can believe my claim)", so we should ban ALL activity of that nature.
I HATE the argument about ableism. People with disabilities have different needs!! I have epilepsy, and sometimes I’ve lost my license while I was adjusting my medication. In my case, prioritizing cars over bike lanes would remove the form of transit that is always available to me. Does that mean it’s also ableist to remove bike lanes, because I, a disabled person, would be inconvenienced? I wish these jerks would stop using disabled people as a weapon in this fight, because it’s clear they don’t value the full range of disabled people’s experiences.
Me too!!!!!! I bike everywhere its the only safe way for me to get around. Driving is so difficult with epilepsy, been going through it almost 30 years. I’d like to hear these peoples opinions if they would rather me have a seizure on the road or in a bike lane! Glad Im able to bike on sidewalks cause aint no way Im biking on the road
And then if a epileptic person had a seizure while driving and got a car accident those car people would just blame the epileptic person and say they shouldn't be driving. They just dictate individual action like that and regurgitate their ignorance. They don't think further how those disabled people can travel then if they can't drive like they told them. And they still fight against non-car infrastructure. It's like how many Americans just double down on individual responsibility and harsher punishment on drinking and driving. Watch Yet Another Urbanist on how in America many times there isn't non-car transportation around bars. Many bars have a parking lot.
Any decision that prioritises one class of people is ableist, is the point. Yes removing bike lanes would also be ableist, intentional or otherwise, though maybe it would be better to call it a trade-off.
My brothers and sisters, please pray for me in rural car obsessed America. The roads here have no shoulders let alone bike lanes, and everyone drive 50 MPH on the "residential" streets.
The suburbs aren't much better. Monster trucks and wank panzers everywhere. No bike lanes, rarely a shoulder. I cry sometimes when I see cities with really nice bike infrastructure.
@@chuckhunter77 I've seen videos of suburbs with no sidewalks or sidewalks that just randomly end. So you have to awkwardly walk in the street. Then car people will just blame pedestrians when there are no sidewalks and those car people won't even look at how there isn't a sidewalk. They think people just want to endanger themselves walking on the road? And sometimes non-drivers can't communicate to drivers there isn't a sidewalk or bike path either cause they can't hear in their cars, with the windows up, or they just angrily speed off before something can be said to them. You would think drivers want non-car infrastructure to keep non-drivers off their roads too.
@@FordnanI'd assume it's what a funny Aussie here on YT calls Blobs. SUV's and "Crossovers" ..... i call them Straßenpanzer(Road Tank) and when it's electric its an E-Straßenpanzer XD
Buddy I've known families that drive just 100 meters to the grocery store. Even as I've proven to them several times that it's literally faster to walk. And yet they still do it because they don't want to carry groceries for 100 meters, only for the little bit from the store to their car and from their car to their front door.
@@drdewott9154 People who live that close here, take the full shopping trolly home and then bring it back again. I've also seen shopping trolleys sitting outside people's homes that they take back to the store as their personal trolley at the next shopping trip, but you're not really supposed to do that...
@@drdewott9154 yeah funny that they have enough money for a car associated trip and not for a wheels basket/trolley... oh that's right doesn't look cool using old people stuff, flipping muppets!!!
@@drdewott9154 They should start seeing the walks as cardio & the carrying of groceries as weightlifting. "Do you even lift bro???" I lift alright, I lift my shopping bags full of bottles, cans, & frozen goods for ten to fifteen minutes (shop to bus stop, bus stop to home) Cheaper than a gym membership, & saves time trying to find THAT parking spot
Exactly. I live 2 miles from work and a grocery store. I don't even own a car. I sold it for an escooter and have absolutely zero regrets. I've got over 2200 miles on my scooter. A cars just doesn't make sense in my situation
As a disabled person who relies on mobilty aids, these people’s perspective is dangerous to my mobile freedom. Disabled people want better infrastructure. We want positive changes like bike lanes.
technically, isn't bike lane a better option for people in a wheelchair ? i know most of the time sidewalk aren't really that flat and can have obstacles
It's crazy to see the people in this video pretending to give a single shite about disabled people so they can justify driving their 2 ton vehicles 0.7km.
@@melissafonteny5538making bike lanes or sidewalks that are continuous, where they don’t dip down to street level, would go a great deal in helping everyone be able to move. More specifically anyone riding a mobility scooter, walking with a cane, etc. basically make the 2+ ton vehicle going over a “speed bump” so that everyone traveling outside of a vehicle has better/safer infrastructure
Old people: Kids these days are always in their homes on their stupid devices. Back in my day we was always outside playing. City council: Makes an actual effort to encourage young people to go outside by making the streets safer. Old people: NO NO NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!!! I swear to God old folks rob the joy of young people on purpose.
@@Technomonkey887 I had seen that a few times as a kid back in the late 2000's. Those same people be complaining on Facebook about how kids don't engage in physical sports anymore and how they were the superior generation lmao.
As a Dutch person I can laugh about this. The reasons they give are ridiculous. "It reduces mobility" No: When more people use a bike for trips they don't need a car for, You will eventually not have to wait for hours on a longer trip using your car. So it actually increases your mobility.
It also increases mobility for people not abla to drive cars for whatever reason. It also makes traffic in general way safer if cars have to go around and people choose bikes. There's also the fact that electric bikes are a thing, increasing mobility on a bicycle over bigger distances even more. These people really have no idea what they're on about lmao.
I moved to the Netherlands and love the infrastructure for bikes here. I find the "agest" argument to be especially absurd, I regularly see people as old and older than these people biking. If you never learned how to ride a bike just say that.
@@jacoblopez4419 It is ridiculous. My grandpa stopped driving the last 5 years of his life, and then rode his ebike every day until he was hit by a car. The road he was hit on now has bike lanes thankfully.
@h82fail I'm sorry to hear but I have to say it's such a perfect example of the problem here. Cars are big and dangerous and so many people are just complaining everything else should be moving out of the way for them.
From Not Just Bikes “car drivers suddenly really care about the things their cars emit only when they’re not allowed to drive wherever they want whenever they want and as fast as they want” Edit: This blew up in a day
@@JsnHendrik Ah yes, because cars are so efficient. They're bulky, unsafe, dirty, and expensive, but god forbid the city install a speed bump when too many people die at an intersection; that would make my car less efficient!
@@JsnHendrikOne day you'll learn that efficiency is one of the least important virtues of design in every field, if not outright irrelevant. If it saves money people are going to trick you into thinking it's the most important thing. Did they do it already?
Anti-bike and anti-pedestrian sentiment is entirely based on incorrect presumption that roads are the exclusive domain of motorists. This is why some motorists get triggered when they see bicycles on the road. They view them as trespassers. Meetings like this are basically an extension of road rage, where motorists are unable to comprehend that the reason they are stuck in traffic is because there are too many cars on the road---and not because of bicycles.
They're stuck on the incorrect assumption that cars are the _one and only_ solution to transportation. Walking is impossible, because everywhere they want to go is too far to walk. Bikes are seen as "toys" for children or a sport that has no real practical purpose outside of recreation. Buses are too few and inconsistent. Therefore, anything that impedes the use of their car is an assault on their mobility.
@@user-iw5mp5th6d cyclists and pedestrians are taxed the same as motorists for road maintenance. With you know, city/local, property, school, etcetera taxes. In fact, cyclists do less damage to the roads than motorists do.
Yes, great point. Also, people have a difficult time understanding any change as a possibility. When it does happen, they usually come up with uncritical judgements. There’s a major road where I live, that planners proposed bike lanes be installed. The storeowners protested it and defeated it. Fact: I never go to a store there, a bakery, because it’s too dangerous to get there by bike. So, they’ve actually lost a customer.
Response: “Anti-bike and anti-pedestrian sentiment is entirely based on incorrect assumption that roads are the exclusive domain of motorists.” To which you: “No, but YEAH!!! If they use OUR roads they should be taxed just like motorists”💭!!!💭 Oh, BTW, road infrastructure comes out of the pockets of *every taxpayer*. Non-drivers are forced to pay for infrastructure catering to motorists’ desires and expectations while having to deal with inadequate non-motoring-centred infrastructure like all-ages appropriate safe cycling infrastructure. Case closed.
Local is great! You can make a big difference with small numbers. Instead of being 1 in millions, you are one of ~50 that actually consistently involved.
This isn't the direction of RUclips. This is the direction of your personalized algorithm. The anti-cyclists get their own video recommendations in their echo-chamber.
@@tezpokemonmaster No. I'm also in NotJustBikes/DutchUrbanPlanning RUclips. I think its very important to keep in mind that the internet is set up to radicalize us, regardless of the topic, and we can't know if our opinion is that of the majority or if we are in our bubble. It's important to keep advocating for bike friendly infrastructure because we are very far from having "made it".
As someone with disabilities I am so fed up of us being used as anti cycling weapon. I had fibromyalgia. Cycling pumps oxygen through the body - that was what I needed to wake up & get moving. My spine seizes up without movement. Cycling helps. I'm female and older I wouldn't feel comfortable driving. I can bike & stop at any pub if need be. I'm also dyslexic and wouldn't be comfortable driving a machine that could kill someone. I can't afford a car or lessons even if I wanted to. Less cars, less pollution, easier for those with breathing issues x
I am disabled and would LOVE more bike paths and lanes! They mean less air pollution. They mean less road noise. They mean more people can safely travel in more ways. If I had better bike pathing near my home, I would work towards investing in an ebike with pedal assist options.
Here in the Netherlands I've seen plenty of different transport used in our bikelanes people on ebikes (my mom actually has one, since her knee operation a normal bike is a bit too difficult for her), people in sitbikes where you use your hands to pedal , blue numberplate mopeds (allowed to drive max. 25km/h) and people in power wheelchair's in the bike lane. It is accessable for all people who want to get from A to B without suffering from traffic. I find it truely laughable the arguments that are brought forward in this conference. I highly recommend trying out an electrically supported bike. It's great for exercise of ROM and it is just lovely to cycle around. I wish you all the best luck with that. Would you be looking into something mountainbikey or more dutch-upright-cycle-bikey?
I went through a city council meeting last week that added bike lanes on a street and it was word for word the same thing. It was actively frustrating. Do they have a script they all follow? Actual madness. Don't worry, we passed the bike lanes!
Bike paths aren't ableist. It IS ableist to assume that all people with disabilities can't bike, and to be unaware of handbikes and other adaptive bikes
We should force all the poor people to bike! Rain, snow, excessive heat? Tough. You can bike there! Cars are for elitist snobs who value their time. /s
Handbikes and adaptive bikes are, to be honest, kinda terrible. Unless you get a specialty bike that allows you to bring your wheelchair along, folks like myself who use chairs are pretty excluded from bike paths. There are the types that attach directly to your chair, but they're unstable, slow, and kinda dangerous. Please don't read this as opposition to bike paths. Just pointing out that adaptive equipment is not really as good as able-bodied legs.
The apparent age of this crowd is not lost on me... whatever happened to leaving the world a better place for our kids and grandkids?? The older generations seem to have taken a 180° on this concept and have decided that their own personal ease and comfort is the only thing the world should be concerned about.
because they were those kids and they never grown up so now they have to give it to the new kids but they refuse, they cant accept they need to give the world to the new kids, its their world that the adults give it to them and only them
"avid cyclist" - drives his mountain bike on the rack on his SUV to a trailhead surrounded by a big parking lot on the weekends; would never consider riding to work, or the store, or anywhere else local & practical
This video (and others here on Oh The Urbanity!) encouraged me to write to my local councilor (municipality in Ontario) about a more bicycle friendly and walkable neighborhood. To my surprise he wants to meet next week to hear more! Here I thought I had no power to make change.
Yes! Perfect question to ask in North America, particularly the US I understand, where many cities seemed to be designed solely with motorists in mind.
It was amazing that by putting down paint and a few flexi posts to make it seem like it's safer to bicycle is limiting choice. She was worried about "forcing" people to bicycle, but wouldn't see the problem of forcing people to drive everywhere.
If you can afford a car, you can afford an electric sit down scooter. The inverse is not true. Cars are not affordable for everybody. When a car is more accessible than a bike/scooter/walking THAT is restricting mobility.
EXACTLY 💯. Typical boomer affluenza ruining life for the rest of us by being selfish and lacking in perspective due to disproportionately benefitting from wealth inequality...
The most dangerous person on the road in the mornings is parents going to morning drop off speeding in their SUV. LEt your kids bike to school, see if they enjoy it. I used to walk to school everyday it took roughly 30 minutes to get to school. I don't think i ever thought about taking the bus. I certainly never expected my mom to drive me.
my mom was only nice enough to drive me in the mornings because i couldn't take the bus to school in the morning and honestly it felt dangerous even as a pedestrian to walk the 30 minutes in the morning, the amount of times i've seen flowers on the sides of the road in that area is honestly distressing in hindsight
I don't think they're the most dangerous -- the drunks are likely the most dangerous. But they are dangerous because they're rushing and not thinking clearly and can't see over the giant hood with the height of the SUV. Impatient people and drunks and the selfish -- and everyone fits into one of those, pretty much.
Drivers texting, fiddling with the infotainment, eating/drinking, applying makeup... alcohol and other recreational drugs, not to mention the sheer number of people on prescription meds with warning labels about driving.
There’s a nice meme of the Challenging Question Goose demanding of a parent “Why do you want to drop your kids as close as possible to the school, [name]?” (The obvious answer, of course, is the desire to protect their own children from being injured or killed by drivers doing just as they are doing.)
As a young Montréalais, I have been biking to school throughout high-school using an old bike lane. Today, the new REV alliows me to continue getting to [m'y full time occupation] by bike daily, in the middle of downtown, something I would never have been able to consider doing before. I am a firsthand witness of how all the new bike paths around Montréal really do have an impact on young biking to school! Let''s go bike paths!
How is adding a form of safe mobility reducing mobility? Who is more mobile? - Someone who needs a car for everything? Or - Someone who can choose between bus, bike, walking, driving, scooter, skates, renting a car, sharing a car, calling Uber or ridesharing service? And ideally having everything prepared for disabled people, so there are no harsh steps and people are protected from being run over by cars? Logic...
That's just a bad faith argument though. In Montreal (the city where this footage was taken from), the city is basically a blizzard 3-6 months a year with 3ft of snow and 1-2 inches thick of ice everywhere. If you reduce car options by reducing parking spaces and reducing the amount of lines in favor of biking lanes... you are depriving people intentionnally of one of the only safe and practical transport option they have for 3 to 6 months a year. You can't walk, bike, skate or do any active type of transport during the winters here. Buses and metro (same company) in Montreal are already unprofitable and on life support because the city is incapable of properly managing it and capacity is already full on most of the existing routes which are not going to expand because... well the other ones are already unprofitable. How about the other options you say? Well you can't service thousands/millions of people by Uber or Ridesharing if... you remove the car infrastructure that facilitated those things working... Last thing is : you can't support jobs that are close enough for walking to make sense if the density in place was made for people to go to work by car previously. It just doesn't make sense to break the infrastructure needed for a settlement to have the density it currently has. The design is already done and built.
@@strellettes8511 I swear everyone here has a fetish for Europe... but as I mentionned in many other comment sections here, Europe is not Canada and Canada is not Europe and people are dumb to compare them. The average distance between capital cities in Canada is larger than entire European countries stacked next to each other... Canada is so scarcely populated in general that road infrastructure was the only logical choice in many areas which means that by default, large population centers need to be adapted for transport flows from primarily car driven communities for economic reasons. Canadian cities then evolved from this and many of them are fairly young in comparison to European cities and evolved in an environment when cars were booming. Large population centers require large flows of goods to come from the outside, in an environment where there is a capital city in every direction every 30-60 minutes of driving it's much easier to have a large rail capacity and much easier to have dedicated roads that may be covered for cycling. In an environment with open roads for cars everywhere, adaptation is much trickier for biking. As for winter, it's also 100% more unsafe to ride a bike during winter than it is during summer. It is in fact illegal to ride a motorcycle during winter in Quebec for the same reasons that next to no one uses a bike during winter here... roads are slippery and an inherently unstable vehicle carries inherent dangers in that environment. It's also unsafe to ride a bike with low visibility during a storm, unsafe to ride them in winter gear designed to handle comfortably -20C to -40C. I actually don't believe the ''there is ubiquitous winter bike riding in some places'' argument because it makes no logical sense for anything passed -15C. A place like Quebec has winters with literal ice forming on your nose and mouth while breathing and removing it even from roads is a challenging business with limited success passed a certain temperature because it just rapidly comes back after removing it...
@@Not.a.bird.PersonAgain, why expect mass transit to be profitable on its own, but not have the same expectations on a road system? Besides, bicycle transport is for inner city transport. Sure, it's not sensible for inter-city, but it can at least reduce the congestion within the city.
Everything about that meeting was pure selfishness in action. 100% an example of "If I lose a convenience, it has to be evil" People like this make me so angry. Never any thought to anyone but themselves, ever.
Interesting is the argument: "As long as they don't take care about the rules we shouldn't build cycle paths". Yes, and for every judged car driver we remove one road project....
They are juste unable to see past the tip or their noses. Thus any decision that will benefit the community before themselves will be a bad one for them because of their space-limited sight (limited to themselves and sometimes their family) and any decision that aim to long-term, diffuse effects will be a bad one for them because of their timed-constrained sight (constrained to literally right now without any consideration for the past or the future, I genuinely didn't see a honest argument brought by the anti-bike community that could consider a situation any different but the one their are currently in) And they are numerous, and they are vocal, and they put all the weight on decisions that affects the whole community for decades, but why should they care because they are not the ones who are or will be negatively impacted by their will the maximize their personal confort without regard to anything else ?
I feel like a lot of these people view biking as this occasional, frivolous activity and don't understand that it's a legitimate mode of transportation used by thousands of people everyday. That and they don't want to share the road. They've always struck me as selfish and close-minded...and honestly not the brightest. Their kids probably use bikes and will be a lot safer with the new bike lane. How can you be against that?
In my community all the infrastructure to "encourage bicycling" benefits only the occasional, frivolous users: it generally makes my bicycle commuting worse.
In NA, cycling is unfortunately considered just a recreational activity instead of a viable mode of transportation (and it has been that way for everyone in living memory). So it is considered frivolous to cater to people who have time and money to be cycling for fitness. People really do not understand that the main point is to expand cycling to everyone and not have it just be for the fitness enthusiasts.
@@machtmann2881 The dynamics are more complicated than that. Bike lanes are broadly popular, which is why so many cities in US and Canada are able to complete bike lane projects despite a few NIMBYs. On street bike lanes are treated as serious but underprotected infrastructure, while off street paths are treated as purely recreational trails.
I remember sitting in on a town meeting about the proposal to build a road that connected this dead end neighborhood to the hospital parking lot. The goal was to provide emergency response vehicles an additional path to access some neighborhoods easier. The residents were concerned it would encourage people to go speeding through their neighborhood and run over their children. No one is going to go through your neighborhood, the only things it would connect to is the hospital. And you guys would have super fast direct access to the hospital. Are you saying access to the hospital is a bad thing? One of the adults even brought their child up so she could break down in tears about how this neighborhood is her home and the city is trying to destroy it and take away their fun spaces. It was the most outrageously stupid and funny town meeting I had ever sat in on.
The issue is this mindset of "anything that impedes me in any way is evil" isn't limited to bike paths. It's anything and everything. The idea that anything these people want is good, and everything else is bad, is an inherently destructive mindset, and these types tend to bring that everywhere they go.
''The idea that anything these people want is good, and everything else is bad, is an inherently destructive mindset, and these types tend to bring that everywhere they go.'' How exactly would you describe someone who wants to tear down perfectly fine roads in favor of bike lanes for their own desires at the expense of the majority of the population who don't want them for sometimes good reasons? As a sidenote, the city from the footage shown is Montreal (I've lived there 8 years). Montreal is a blizzard at -30 Celsius with 3ft of snow and 2 inches thick of ice on every surface for 3 to 6 months a year. How exactly is removing car lanes to put bike lanes a good idea in that kind of area? The bike lane literally sits empty for half the year with no possibility to be used. No one is going to wear a 2 inches thick coat, winter boots and half an inch thick mittens to ride a bike that will fall off randomly and dangerously at the first ice plate and with 20mph winds of -30C air in their face. With this context in mind, please tell us again about how destructive this ''mindset'' that you describe is?
@@Not.a.bird.Person 1. Bike lanes are good, actually, because cyclists aren't the only person using them. 2. They might need a little more maintenance, like salting, but I doubt they'll remain completely unused. 3. Car lanes take up far more space. Some roads even have 7 lanes on each side. Imagine if that was a bike path, or, you know, a train? 4. They didn't even tear down the road, they just put up some cones, and it was never even mentioned what they'd do in the winter. The entire point of my comment was these people were getting territorial over something that was ultimately just an inconvenience. They didn't know anything about what a bike lane would provide, and didn't even follow the rules of driving they complained about. And my final point was that's an attitude that goes towards things like the job market ("Nobody wants to work these days!") or the economy ("Just stop buying coffee once a day and you'll be able to buy a luxury car!").
@@oshawott4544 ''1. Bike lanes are good, actually, because cyclists aren't the only person using them.'' Pointless value judgment at best and doesn't address a single concern I've mentionned. Ideological drivel at worst. ''2. They might need a little more maintenance, like salting, but I doubt they'll remain completely unused. '' There is a limit to how much you can make a path practical to use passed a certain termperature and bikes are inherently more dangerous to use on slippery roads due to the static instability of the vehicle. The point is maintenance will not solve the lack of safety for winter biking in Quebec. Motorcycles are literally illegal in winter in Quebec because of this. ''3. Car lanes take up far more space. Some roads even have 7 lanes on each side. Imagine if that was a bike path, or, you know, a train?'' I don't care what space something takes if it is designed intelligently and practically. It fundamentally is of no consequence to me if a road has 1, 6 or even 10 lanes if it has a given purpose and it is fulfilling it. Bike lanes conversions, however, are done at the detriment of existing infrastructure in nearly every case they are implemented unless they are included in the initial design. *This* is the real issue. It boils down to unintelligent use of space and degradation of public services for the majority. ''4. They didn't even tear down the road, they just put up some cones, and it was never even mentioned what they'd do in the winter.'' That's a distinction without a difference. There is no functionnal difference between tearing down a road and repurposing it for bike lanes since functionnal use is lost for cars. As for winters.. I've lived in the city shown for 8 years. I've seen what they do... the answer is they are basically forbidden areas on a street that no car is allowed in at any time of the year... which is just a waste of space for ideological purposes. ''The entire point of my comment was these people were getting territorial over something that was ultimately just an inconvenience. '' It might be just an ''inconvenience'' to you when you look at it from a point of view of never having thought of the city involved before watching this video... Here's another point of view : what should I do if I have one of those lovely bike lanes coming to my street that is parking deprived already and I need my car to get to work 30km away because there is no functionnal alternative and biking is never going to happen in a million year during a snow storm? The answer is : I am forced to move out of the city. What do I do if the next apartment I move to costs twice as much because of an ongoing housing crisis in Canada? That's right, I am now significantly poorer because of terrible city planning and people like you who like to push for ideologies over rationality. *This* is the kind of inconvenience we are talking about to the people involved. This is why those people hate this.
Hey, don't make fun of her. It's hard to remember Fox News talking points from memory when you're under all of that public speaking pressure! /s And yes, there are confused Canadians who watch Fox News and don't realize the government they complain about is in a different country.
lol yes. I so far have not a single person who is still allowed to drive but unabee to use a bike, trike, mobility scooter etc. on a bike lane. Bike lanes increase mobility, not reduce it.
In 2021 a 79 year old woman woman in London Ontario in Canada (What NJB calls Fake London) murdered an 8 year old child and maimed 7 other children. They were girl scouts selling cookies in the neighborhood when she hopped the sidewalk travelling 120+ km/h. The road speed limit was 50 km/h Her sentence? 2 years of house arrest!
Damn right! But saying that would be ageism, so instead we should propose driving reevaluation tests every year or two. If they will react with "that's anti motorist discrimination!", then we can make an experiment on who better navigates the streets: cyclists or drivers. I would continue author argument analogy with flight certificate by saying that aviation authorities require from older pilots more frequent reevaluation for obvious reasons. And flying have a common theme with driving - humans don't naturally posses knowledge and experience since it's unnatural to us. After all, they are just a bunch of hypocritical elitists, who can't comprehend that they don't "own" the streets because they are public , and thus should be equally managed. IMHO, I have zero hope to change some boomer NIMBY mind, but at least other locals won't get brainwashed by their rhetoric
NDG is extremely walkable, though. This area is around Monkland Village. Given that, I agree with more bike lanes. However, I do believe consultation should have happened. I also know that in one area, the street was narrowed to the extent that the bus could not turn into it; this was in a neighbouring area, not NDG. I think the implementation could be better. I can imagine that it might be challenging for people who have a hard time walking (actually, I know because I have a family member who uses a walker and I am basically in this area) and who are dropped off by a car or by assisted transportation to walk through a bike lane in order to get to the sidewalk, particularly in winter when Montreal streets are icy. Like I said, I support bike lanes, but the lack of consultation did not help the cause. I simply wanted to point out that this area is extremely walkable and is an amazing neighbourhood, with the kind of mixed density for which Montreal is renowned. Cycling is not as big in NDG, but the people who live in the area do like to walk over cycling because you do not need a bike to walk to the corner or just a block ot two away.
I would have recommended an ebike, because they tend to get ridden more, but if you do the miles, your condition will improve. I'm 62 and decades of bike commuting have allowed me to stay away from the medical industrial complex. Have fun!
my mom was 62 when i was 24 and i watched her cycle up a hill that i had to get off my bike and walk up, its not that bike lanes are ageist its just that these people don't exercise they drive 700 meters instead of walk 7-10 minutes
Pro bike lane people are always like: "Studies consistently show this will reduce the number of kids we kill, and also this is more efficient in terms of travelers per square meter of road, and bikes do less road damage than cars because they weigh less so it's more more affordable to maintain over the long term." Anti bike lane people: "You hate your community, and there's a vast secret conspiracy by You Know Who to trap us in our neighborhoods." And it's a real failure of the public education system that any people consider category two to be good and convincing argumentation to support a position on optimal infrastructure mixes.
Ask the anti bike people if they know that cars are a conspiracy by You Know Who to make child and fentanyl trafficking easier. They added a new lane to the highway in my area and now MS-13 lives nextdoor to me.
And most ironically, the thing that _actually_ traps people in their home/neighborhood is car dependent status quo they're defending. But of course they don't understand this, because car dependency only traps the young, the old, the disabled and the poor and those people don't _genuinely_ care about any of these groups. Maybe they'll understand it in the near future, when it becomes normalized for their fancy new cars to require a breathalizer test to start (such law already being debated in several countries) and can remotely be immobilized by the stealership or scamufacturer in case you're behind on your mortgage or subscription payment (some stealerships already do that) because all corporations nowadays want to sell their products without transferring full ownership to the buyer, aka the new rightful owner, since the technology (connected services) to retain control over things you no longer physically possess now exists and regulators/consumer protection agencies do nothing against these abusive business practices!
I see maybe two people in the entire room under the age of 50. So basically it is a bunch of old curmudgeons who just want to keep kids off their lawns. My neighborhood has bike lanes on all major streets. My only complaint is that they got cheap with it and only painted lines for the lanes. The bike lanes are much better when they have physical barriers like pylons or curbs to separate the space for drivers. In many places, these lanes have parking for parks and schools. The neighborhood consistently ranks among the most desirable in the city, partially because of the bike infrastructure. Your kids aren't dodging moving cars just to ride their bikes.
It is honestly remarkable to me that some of the most dangerous roads in the city are outside schools at drop off time...and the cause of that danger is 100% the parents of all the children who are in grave danger.
@DanielBrotherston I had to stop cycling to school as a kid after a driver decided parking in a no parking zone on top of the cycle lane I was in was the right decision. My bike was ruined, she was angry at me for being in her way, and although I was unharmed I decided cycling simply wasn't worth risking my life when a parent could care so little about another childs life. I think making a dedicated drop off zone and bike lane that can't be occupied by cars is one of the smartest things they could do, it's so much safer.
In my observation. There is the same proportion of idiots riding bikes as there is with cars. but bikes have the statistical advantage of...you know, not being a two ton metal box that goes 70 km/h and skip stops in school neighborhood.
@@fredbyoutubingif an Idiot gets out of their Car and onto a Bicycle then they're still the same Idiot. But yeah the difference is like you said how much Damage they can do
They should have been honest by saying "We don't want bike lanes." Let's take a vote: Who doesn't want bike lanes? raise your hand. Instead they made themselves vulnerable by making reasons that the opposition can blow holes through.
I love how they say that cyclists don't follow road laws, when I see dozens of cars running red lights on the daily, and the amount of cars that actually do their stop signs is very very little.
Also they often don't know the law and will become aggressive, verbally and at times physically assault bikers because they think they are right. Where I live it's allowed to overtake cars on the left assuming there is space - the number of times I saw cars purposefully turning towards the pavement to block the bike passing them last minute or freaking out when a bike passed them (including shouting verbal abuse from the windows or literally chasing the bike down the street and pulling people off their bikes...). They always think they ar heroes catching the evil biker law-breakers when they are not only in the wrong from the get go but also break the law by assaulting poeple.
I live in Australia. Australians are like this too. I hate it! Can barely afford rent. If I could sell my car, I could save money by buying a bike. I might have a little bit of disposable income left. I don’t mean to sound ageist, and I know not all elderly people are like this; but it pains me that they refuse to support this because some hate progress or because they’re just misinformed. Why can’t I choose to ride public transport, bike, or walk? Why do I need a car just to drive 15 minutes? Obviously I don’t want to ban cars, but there should be a few options for people to choose from. All the people that complain about ‘limited mobility’ are the very people limiting my mobility.
We very much have a car culture. It drives me to distraction (excuse pun). I ride my bike when I can (I have health issues) and I’ve always used public transport. I’m in my 60s. I just cannot understand the vitriol against cyclists. I can only explain it that maybe deep down they are envious of cyclists’ fitness and activity levels. It’s really ironic how people join a gym, drive there, and then spend half hour on the stationary bike. Then rant and rave against cyclists!
@@HenriettaP There is no such thing as "car culture." It's all marketing and lobbying. That's not culture. Decades of manipulation explain the vitriol too. 😒
when I was in my 20's I was riding a bike to work. A man pulled up on his bike, beside me. We chatted for a while. I said "I hope to be riding to work when I'm 50." He said "why stop at 50, I'm 70" and then he put on some speed and left me in the dust. Now I'm 50 and though I've switched to skateboarding (learned at 48 because of the dogs), I still travel about on my bike.
What I find ironic is the claim that cycle lanes are 'ageist' because elderly people can't ride a bike as well anymore. So, to compensate that they can't react as fast anymore, we just put the elderly into big metal boxes that go faster than bikes, where if something happens it's much worse for everyone involved !
Old people don't ride bikes? Never heard of Florida or Arizona. I'm a young senior who uses my bike to commute to and from work as a truck driver. Bike routes would increase seniors' ability for mobility as well as for people on mobility scooters. What you have there is a room full of miserable Karen's and Kevin's. They themselves probably need to get out on a bike and get some fresh air and exercise, which may improve their miserable attitudes.
Never heard of arthritis, vertigo or osteoporosis? There is also visual actuity, and simply not being used to look 6 ways for cyclists, skateboarders, escooters in addition to cars and trucks. It is not a surprise seniors especially opposed badly planned bike lanes. Then there is the the biking crowd, which already skews differently from the general population. Not surprised ageist & ableist gets thrown around in these debates My own opinion is that indeed, urban planning departments are ageist & ableist
@@tommyshanks4198 I don't know many elderly people that are comfortable on a bicycle, but I would assume that the children who grow up in very bike friendly areas will have a lot less physical limitations when they're older. We have to start realizing that we may never see the complete benefits of these changes within our own lifetimes, but other people will greatly benefit down the line
@@tommyshanks4198 Well, when you have arthritis or osteoporosis it is important to remain active, especially with bone and musscle strengthening activities ! Cycling is ideal for that, especially with an e-bike the effort can be regulated to the user ... For bone strengthening more impact activities are advised The neighbour of my mother has been spastic since youth, and currently, age late 50s/early 60s has artritis a chronic hernia. But in all those 3 conditions it is important for her to remain active. She goes on a daily walk for 40 minutes. She works in Home care and goes to her clients in several neighbouring villages by e-bike.
I think they meant to say that old people who never rode a bike still don't intend to. But they will scream if they have to be retested for driving ability. And yet a fatality that occurred near another recently installed bike path was attributed to the driver, who subsequently gave up their license. According to the coroner's report, the fatality had nothing to do with the bike path (Bourret) but local critics of bike paths continue to claim that it did. :(
Oh, I remember this one! I got so pissed watching the video as it just showed one of the worst things that can happen in conferences: circlejerking. There were almost no oppositional thoughts or critical thinking.
That's why the video creator (don't know his name sorry) should have spoken up instead of making an online video criticising these people. Not like they're gonna watch this video. This comment section is just as much of a circle jerk as what we see in the vid tbh
@@mds3697 Absolutely. I personally wanted to attend this meeting but I had thought at the time that my voice would not be of any use to such a meeting. Oh I was wrong, I would have provided great footage and a great reasonable anchor :P
@@mds3697 in a way, yes, but the video is directly responding their meeting. however I have to say it's not always a good idea to speak up against the majority in meetings like that, they are not there to listen to opposed opinion, and it's possible people will just kick you out of there. it's also not easy, because you are alone basically dealing with gish gallop, it's a lot of information you will have to check before giving a counter argument to them. meaning speaking up is probably a second meeting thing.
"Bike lanes reduce peoples mobility" ... The amount of facepalms I have for that remark knows no bounds. "Bike lanes are agist and ableist". that couldn't be further from the truth and I as someone who has trouble riding a standard bike due to a knee injury am furious at that statement. If the only bikes that existed were the standard pedal bikes you commonly see, they may have a point. But eBikes exist to allow for people who have issues pedalling to enjoy biking. My mother-in-law who's in her senior years and also has a lot of health issues also has an eBike which she uses all the time. There are also adaptive bikes to support other forms of disabilities, including eScooter attachments for wheelchairs, or hand pedalling ebikes. Plus I've also seen my fair share of electric wheelchair users also use the bike lanes too. Mostly because they're safer than the streets and smoother than the sidewalks. And of course these people conveniently forget that a lot of elderly and disabled people can't drive either.
Ebikes are also great for areas not built on flat land! I live in an area with a lot of steep hills where cyclists typically have to dismount and walk their bike up the hill. There's 3 hills like this between my home and work despite it being a relatively short distance, so I got an ebike to save time and energy. I also have a neurological condition that doesn't necessarily prevent me from driving, but makes me feel less safe doing so. I sometimes zone out or get extremely distracted, which could result in an accident if I suddenly need to react very quickly. On a bike, i will usually go over a bump or begin sliding onto the raised lip on the side of the road and snap out of it. I'm sure one day this will cause me to get in an accident, and if it does, I want to minimize the harm I am capable of doing to others. I don't see how making the roads LESS dangerous for people like me is ableist!
My grandma quit driving her car at the age of 75 or so. She did not feel like she was able to drive properly anymore (which was good judgment imho). So she started riding a bicycle. Eventually she stopped that too - she was a tiny lady, and e-bikes did not exist in her size yet (it's only fairly recently that e-bikes in smaller sizes appered on the market). But she did get another 7 years of mobility out of normal bikes before getting a taxi-bus pass, with which she could be picked up and dropped off by a taxi van wherever she wanted.
Saying that bike lanes are ageist is crazy. My Grandfather was riding his bike everywhere for his entire life. He still got over 100km a week when he was 85 and had cancer. If you say old people aren't able to ride a bike, they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a car.
Just a bunch of people complaining about change. You'll live, you'll adapt, but it's better for a greater good and future. I'd rather have safety for my child riding than a convenience for my driving. I'd love to have this in my city in California.
Before: You can drive, walk or take transit After: You can drive, walk, take transit, cycle or use fast mobility scooters Conclusion: "It is a concerted effort to reduce people's mobility"
Before: You can drive, walk*, or take transit** *Walking will be unpleasantly close to fast moving vehicles, and possibly injure you, so nobody actually will, but we technically get to check the box. ** transit will be limited, inconvenient, costly, and slower, but we technically get to check the box.
@@michaelcartmell7428 Actually, there have been several incidents in Montreal over the past two decades of people on sidewalks injured or killed by motor vehicles coming up over the side and plowing into them.
@@olska9498 or they could get on a bike to go to the shop. Maybe even walk. I bet most of the time they are just nipping to the shop to get bread and milk.
I'm from this area and attended an information session and watched a city council meeting about the path. One thing I noticed is that the same few people end up speaking for everyone.
@@Schlabbeflickeryeah maybe. Cynical much? I too know the area. We just had a pitchfork meeting but on a totally different subject , a building for itinerants. They would show up each day for a bed that night. Fortunately the group didnt do a good job of choosing the right area and its all off. This crap on Terrebonne stinks of bs. What is wrong with an effing bike lane. Yes you might loose parking, but you should have a driveway! Lol! I realize driveways arent everybody’s luck. Still bike lanes , though a pain for us older richer folk, are kind neccesary. I wouldnt listen to these fools in their meeting
I saw my own street corner in the video and they changed the street to a one way with cycle lanes like mentioned. I was skeptical at the usefulness when this happened. This summer, I've seen so much more families with young children riding along together. People adjusted and now make it part of their commute.
also wrt the ageist complaint: a lot of seniors also can't drive? i don't know what the laws around this are in canada, but practically speaking someone in a motorized wheelchair can absolutely safely use a bike lane
I guess the biggest complaint there might not even be about the bike lanes but the bikes available to the public. Conventional mens bikes like those that are largely the only on the market in North America require lots of agility to get on and off. Especially compared to womens bikes with a step through frame like an Omafiets, which is more suited to the elderly. Here in Denmark we've had ads from the traffic safety council letting the elderly be aware of switching their bike to a more accessible one to lower the risk of getting hurt while getting on or off.
In the northern suburbs of Toronto I'm noticing an increasing number of elderly people using cargo tricycles (sometimes electric). They may not be able to ride a bicycle or drive a car anymore but at least the cycling infrastructure allows them to get to and from the grocery store independently within a reasonable amount of time.
@@OntarioTrafficMan Where exactly do you see these people? I would love to have an electric cargo trike and its nice to hear that there are people in my region who are using them. I have never seen one in person but I would LOVE to have one!
Roads were originally made for pedestrians... and horses. They both shared the road equally and it was more a public space. Then because the auto industry was suddenly killing pedestrians it had to come up with a way to blame them so they invented the "jaywalking" law.
There is a general term: Motonormativity, essentially it refers to an idea that cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving.
Based on this meeting my conclusion is we need to talk more about senior-friendly vehicles when we advocate for cycling infrastructure. Like pointing out that it enables faster mobility scooters and tricycles to keep people independently mobile even after they lose their license
@@OntarioTrafficMan The problem is less seniors and more that they spent their whole life inside cars. They'll see any car alternative as a downgrade to their lifestyle.
@@OntarioTrafficMan I would like to see more accessible bike models be introduced to Canadian cities. I have visited some bike shops in the Greater Toronto Area looking for a bike that would meet my needs- I can't balance on a bike very well due to some issues with my motor skills, and I would love to be able to have an adult trike or some form of other accessible model. That's something I find interesting when seeing bike footage in european cities- there is often a lot more kinds of bike and bike-sized mobility options. I don't think that bike lanes are ableist because there are many people who cannot drive due to age or a disability, and cycling has a less difficult learning curve, but because there are people like myself, and many other disabled people and seniors who would have troubles riding a two-wheeled bike, I see a huge need for there to be much more types of bike available.
@@OntarioTrafficMan good wide cycle paths are very suitable for eldely cyclists. And they also can be used for socalled mobility scootbmobiles. In Netherlands very important for elderly who can't/aren't allowed to drive anymore and have problems with cycling.. And when you make them wide enough they can be used for emergency response vehicles as well, when the road is congested !! Bicycle Dutch : Who else benefit dutch cycling infrastructure. ruclips.net/video/xSGx3HSjKDo/видео.html&ab_channel=BicycleDutch
The real safety double standard is how traffic violations by individual cyclists are always used to oppose infrastructure for bikes. But just a common traffic violations by individual dtivers are never used to oppose expanding car infrastructure. 🤬
Have you been to Montreal (the city this footage is taken from)? Montreal is a blizzard with -30 Celsius, 3ft of snow and 2in thick of ice everywhere for 3 to 6 months a year. In that context, not only are bike lanes reducing mobility, they are literal empty parking lots that you can't park in for HALF THE YEAR!!!
@@serenityf.6234 Europe is not Canada. Stop trying to make it so. Much of Europe is not even remotely comparable to Canada in any way both in economic terms and in geographic terms. The vast majority of Canada's population lives within a small radius of just a couple cities that are very far from each other. Canada is extremely sparse and is nowhere near the average density of even the least dense countries of Europe. ''Good cycling infrastructure'' doesn't just magically happen in a vacuum where you just have to break enough car infrastructure for it to work. An empty unusable biking lane is not ''good cycling infrastructure''.
@@Not.a.bird.Person I don't get the argument about inter-city density...most people in Europe are not biking between cities, they are biking to work or to the cafe. A bike lane that is empty could be so for a variety of reasons...perhaps it is not cleared (not a bike lane problem but a city maintenance one), or it doesn't connect well to other areas yet (rome wasn't built in a day), or just it's a commuting lane that is very busy at specific times of years. My street has almost no car traffic on it 98% of the time...should we remove it? Of course not...Canada isn't like Europe because, 50-100 years ago some people wanted a different looking country. Some people now want their country to look different. I'm not saying owning a car should be hard or terrible, I'm saying owning a bicycle and going to work should be a safe option. It's possible, but it takes sharing of resources. Not everyone bikes, not everyone drives. Let's share.
Dutchman here, just check out “ Not Just For Bikes”, I think it’s from a Toronto guy who lived all over the world and currently resides in The Netherlands. Just fun to watch his experiences, especially for those who think they are car dependent.
They're bad with numbers. They think "I have three lanes each way now, if that becomes 2 lanes each way then I will get there a third slower!" Not realizing that the capacity of a bike lane is a huge amount more than the capacity of a car lane, about five times as much in my experience. So those 2 car lanes that are left will actually have less cars on them and flow faster, because a lot of people will switch to bikes or walking.
Because once you've got a car, removing a parking space (on the street) takes away the convenience of a car. Many of these residents who are opposed have been parking on the street for many years. Now, with the bike lane they are losing that which makes having a car more and more of an inconvenience.
Affluent white people love driving in their hyper convenient personal cars and don't consider any other forms of transportation to be valid. That's it. That's the whole reason. It's the same reason you get road rage and festering frustration for parking. Acclimation to the silver spoon.
@@bengt_axle So what you are saying is that they have been reducing people's mobility by storing their personal vehicle on the public street for years or decades for free and are now complaining about that being taken away?
"How are families supposed to transport their children?" They're not supposed to! Stop giving in to American thinking, kids are supposed to be able to get places themselves without mom playing taxi and feeling like a superhero for all the things she does for her kids.
Back in the 70s I used to ride my bike to school. Back then of course there was no such thing as a "bike lane" were I lived here in Australia. You weren't allowed to ride on the footpath because you might knock someone down. So you had to ride between the parked cars and the moving vehicles. Watch out for car doors being flung open. Then if you wanted to turn right, (we drive on the left), you had to cross in front of traffic and turn at the intersection while crossing back to the outside. Boy, did that upset drivers who had to slow down for 10 seconds. It was like the end of the world. I was yelled out numerous times like everyone else on a bike for "riding in traffic"; where I was supposed to be; some drivers in such a rush would then decide you needed to be lectured. Many years later as a driver, I remember all that and always let bike riders have the right of way, and give them plenty of space. Bike lanes eventually appeared here, just not many and of course drivers complain about them "taking up space".
Also, the introduction of mobile phones. How many still look at their phone for texts etc, though I have seen casual cyclists look too. To survive is to have instincts and that alone will keep you alive, pity those who don't qualify. I used to ride to work, on every ride respect is given to cars because they will hurt when collided with. Now that I drive because of location change, still respect is given to cars, especially trucks.
"I wasn't consulted" they really expect city officials to go and knock door to door and consult everyone. Meanwhile I bet they didn't bother to go to any of the city run meetings. Calgary is getting multiple bike lanes. I've had a month to give as much feedback as I please on the ones going in my neighborhood via in person events, and an online portal where I could mark concerns on a map, and leave public comments. The comments were overwhelmingly positive, also people could up vote or downvote comments. Pro comments were more numerous than against, and they got far more upvotes. Later in the fall, they'll reveal the design, and I'll get to leave feedback again. I bet when they start building it, there will be people screeching that "they weren't consulted" even though they would have had plenty of time and opportunities to do so
I wonder if there's posters/flyers up in the neighbourhood that ironically motorists don't notice whilst driving around, but people outside of cars do.
Absolutely right on the part where they expect someone to notify them specifically when anything specifically relevant to them is happening. I was just at a community meeting for a new development near me. Like clockwork, people said the BS about how 11 new cars will cause a parking and traffic catastrophe. They felt like it was some conspiracy that they weren’t notified. However I’m subscribed to all the development plan updates via email and I heard about the meeting last month.
@@JWK35 yep multiple posters, and even a portable billboard got put up for the ones in my neighborhood. And I saw the portable billboard in one of the other neighborhoods getting bike lanes
Reminds me of the new-ish LRT bridge in Edmonon. They did the same thing, gave people plenty of time to decide on what to do, gave the people plenty of time to look at the approved design and voice any concern, etc. The moment they announced they were going through with the plan that the community approved of, basement dwellers popped up in droves, screaming that there was no consultation.
You don't really want to vote on every single little thing either. CA does this and voters just tune out because it's overwhelming. You can't expect regular people to be an expert on everything out there. It's better to vote for more general directions or on implemented results than be forced to read "legal-ese" each time you vote for something on the ballot.
interesting how they talk about safety of children but their only practical arguments concern their selfish desire to drive faster. They desperately wanna drive their child killing machines through the neighbourhood as fast as possible
I think this is what they actually mean when they keep saying “dangerous.” They mean that because of the new design, they have to drive more attentively and make some changes to their routine, and this makes them nervous. Since the redesign “caused” their anxiety, it must mean that the design is dangerous. It’s emotional reasoning.
As I watched this, I repeatedly found myself getting angry to hear the same insanity about bikes that I had to listen to in my 30 years of living in Toronto. But I kept calming down by reminding myself that this is why I now live in the Netherlands. It still isn’t clear to me how driving in Canada causes an inability to reason or think…
There must be something in the water over there. They should research that and remove the compound that causes such irrationality. Oh, wait: it's a cultural problem. Which means there's no quick and easy cure! 🥶
@@EricaGamet In the 70s in the Netherlands we had mostly public uproar to build bike lanes and reduce car traffic, which is why the country is how it is today. The focus on cycling didn't come from the top down. There were lots of protests against car traffic mainly because people were fed up with increasing accidents.
It's natural to be annoyed about new inconveniences in your daily life, but it's stunning how incredibly mad people like this get over them. I mean, seriously? An injunction on all bike paths in Montreal, attempting to choke the progress of thousands of peoples' transportation, just because parking is a bit less convenient now?
@@laughinggiraffe9176 "suppliers of multi floor parking garages will step in to meet the demand." To be fair, that might not be allowed by zoning. Certainly wouldn't be in the US.
I understand some of their complaints, but they didn't even use the parking. That's like me saying I don't want to throw away this box of usb cables I never use cause one day I might use it. It's silly. I had a bike path blocked like this for years, now it's here and tons of people ride it up and down. Another thing is , requiring license and registration for bikes seem silly too. unless you're a senior citizen , you can probably just brush off a bike hit and keep walking, not so much a hit by a car. Pretty much any hit with a car will provide injury. People don't know physics tho, they don't think in terms of science, they only think in terms of their conveniences.
It's funny watching these smooth brained seniors talk about how it's "ageist" & "ableist" to have these bike lanes lmao I was hit by a senior who was driving reckless and hit me going full speed (50km) no brakes now I don't have a car (I paid $18k for it and got $3k from the accident) I can never work ever again I used to be a mechanic and I have to rely on a bicycle to do my groceries and go to my dr appointments solely because of people like this and also the lady saying "because of the bike lanes on the way here I felt lost and no clue where I was going" please give your license up and sell your car and buy a nice ebike before you kill or ruin someone's life like the geezer that ruined mine......
When it comes to ageism and biking: My grandmother, when she had to give up driving due to serious health issues, switched to a tricycle (she typically rode on the sidewalk, nobody stopped her even though that's technically not legal where this was happening), and was able to get about town that way for many years until she couldn't do that anymore. Also, for the lady concerned about school drop-off: How about instead of dropping your kid off every day, you give the kid a bike, the kid rides down the nice safe bike lane and gets themselves to school?
Or get a bike yourself, improve your health and ride to school with them, or get a cargo bike, keep dropping them off at school, do your groceries and other errands without contributing to climate change, improve your health and longevity so that you can have more quality time with your kids as they grow up?
Also the argument that the elderly or unfit who can't walk or cycle are too numerous so we can't give up car space is kinda self-fulfilling. Making light exercise attractive does wonders for public health and delaying the deterioration with age. And every bicycle is one less car on the road to make space for who does really need it.
Moreover I would be waaaaay more fine if my kids, whether by foot or by bike, didn't have to take the risk to be hit by 3tons SUV drove by a frustrated man that know he will have to go in a traffic jam and thus be late at work. And of course, besides this possibility, it is maybe a little bit better if they don't have to inhale toxic fumes produces by those cars and catch asthma at the very best
I heard people complaining that it was not safe for kids to ride to school therefore they must be driven, right beside other comments claiming that no bike lane was necessary because the roads were safe as-is. It's anything that gets me what I want.
I am Dutch and born with a muscle illness. Let me just say that bike lanes are the opposite of ageist and ableist. Chances are that, if you are too old or disabled to ride a bike, you won't be able to drive a car either. You are probably driving around in a mobility scooter or electric wheelchair, which make bike lanes very convenient and safe.
I am in Australia, which is not a very bike friendly country. However, as a cyclist, I constantly come across friendly people who are travelling as I am. And as I see the majority of the population rushing around in their motorized tin boxes, I don't see a friendly wave anywhere.
I'm a fellow aussie who's a bit of a "tinbox" enthusiast (Restoring a Holden Ute as a project as we speak) and to be honest? The more we spend on cycling infrastructure and better public transit, the better our roads will be for people who actually need to, and who actually care about driving.
The woman complaining about her drive going from 0.7kms to 2kms is half the issue. People are so conditioned to drive for every trip that she will drive 700 metres before ever considering, cycling or walking. The longest walk for most of these people is to the fridge
Yeah, even considering using your car for such distances is something I don’t understand. If you live so close to the shops you can do groceries every day or every other day, which can easily fit in a backpack or panniers. 700m is a nice walk, though I might choose to grab my bike for that.
Was that even their entire drive, or just the portion within the neighbourhood? It's extremely disingenuous to rant about doubling driving distance, when it's a portion of typically much longer trips.
@geoff5623 from her own chicken lips, her drive was 0.7kms. I didn't make up the 700m number. If that lady wants to engage in hyperbole to sensationalise her claim, that's on her. No me.
@@Aussie_stu not criticizing you - I'm also critical of her statement. Even if that 2km total distance drive is one she does regularly, I'm sure it's not her most frequent trip, so she's being very selective in picking a trip that doubles to be sensational when (1) it's not actually that far, and the extra distance is a small amount of emissions over just getting the car started twice (2) she must have more trips where the extra distance is a negligible amount (3) if that bike lane encourages just one person the cycle that same distance instead of driving for each time she would make that trip, it's a net benefit
I’ve never seen a bike with seat belts, safety glass, collision detection, front and curtain airbags. Seems bikers don’t give two flying squirts about safety by this metric. Most of the rare ones I see where I live don’t have proper reflectors and aren’t wearing helmets either. The scooter folks are even worse. I’ve driven a stranger to the ER before who had a serious wound from falling off a rental scooter.
@@CountJeffula Don't you think those safety features are necessary on a vehicle that weight 2 metric tons and not useful on a vehicle that weight less than 10 kg and move at a speed of 20 kmh usually?
@@thepedrothethethe6151 Depends. I’d rather be in a car with those safety features crashing into a brick wall at 30 miles per hour than a bike. You can go on the bike and we can see who’s hurt more. How is the weight relevant when it’s the deceleration forces that cause the most issues?
@@CountJeffula bro didn't care think the risk of children getting run over by car or even the property damage caused by a car got sent flying to a building
@@ero6056 parents should watch their children. What nonsense is this? And you’re suggesting a car can damage a building, so ban them? A plane, train, and boat can do a hell of a lot more damage, so we should ban all them too.
Correct! NO children drive, but children CAN ride bicycles. And the elderly can ride bicycles, too. The elderly can prolong their strength and agility by biking.
And there are many older people no longer able to drive, and people of all ages never able to. Then there are all those killed, made sick, impoverished and whose quality of life has been significantly diminished by a car-dependent society.
In the Netherlands all the bike infrastructure is paid for by car drivers. If you own a car, you pay "road tax" which is used for roads, bike paths, and pedestrian infrastructure. The reasoning behind this is that cycling infrastructure is only needed because cars make it unsafe otherwise. Without cars, we wouldn't need any separate infrastructure.
Different infrastructure has different purposes, and restricting cars to roads and bikes to bike/multipurpose paths makes things safer for everyone. You wouldn't want cars driving on sidewalks just because "my tax dollars pay for it".
The closest thing you'll get to a conspiracy was the way people lost their mobility when they were all but forced to own and drive a car. I get that most people would rather drive than walk/bike or use mass transit. But getting rid of every form of transportation other than driving your own car isn't exactly pro-mobility.
"I get that most people would rather drive than walk" I really don't think that's the case. Who would chose a 5 minute drive over a 10 minute walk? I think most people would just walk, given there wasn't a reason not to (bad weather, lots of stuff to carry). I think it's more that driving tends to be the best option not only long-range but also short-range. The latter being an infrastructure issue.
Who are your friends? Pretty much everyone where I live would choose the drive. The walk you could get mugged/shot/run over/sweaty/experience annoying panhandlers/and more. Driving you get climate control, good music, navigation, cup holders, heated/AC seats. Walking you get none of that.
It's impossible to know if there's an actual conspiracy or not, but I don't think that personally matters. I like to think about it like this; what kind of environment could shift the overton window enough to allow enough support in the future for certain policies that have very little public support today? To steelman the restricted mobility argument, the first thing that I could think of is the idea that cars could be far more heavily restricted in the future, to the point that choosing to drive to a different city was far more difficult and/or expensive: a world with increased local mobility, but decreased (or less private) long distance mobility. That's the kind of thing I think they're talking about. Now could a single bike lane shift the overton window enough to allow for that to get enough public support? Of course not. But I do think bike infrastructure in general contributes a fair bit to that potential. I think if we got to the point of local transportation infrastructure being good enough for most people to not need cars, combined with public transportation being self driving electric vehicles, then public support would likely be enough to create such restrictions over a period of time in the name of environmentalism. I think some restrictions like I described already exist in some places to a minor degree. But, even with that potential, is it worth fighting against bike lanes and other infrastructure upgrades? I don't think so. I live in a rural area so I'm biased towards driving of course, but I understand that the more people using other forms of transportation in the city, the less traffic there would be for people that need to drive in. All that stuff I described before is a fight for another time.
Right?! Where I live in SF Bay Area California, which has areas of bike friendly pathways but needs much more, a 7 year old who was on a bicycle with her Dad was killed one Saturday morning when a driver swerved the car into the (non-protected) bike lane and hit the bicycle knocking the child off the bike and killing that child. Had there been a protected bike lane, the child would still be alive today and that driver wouldn't be hit with criminal charges (manslaughter) and possible guilt and anguish for killing a young girl.
I've infiltrated their Facebook page by feigning opposition to the bike path, and oh boy, is it a wild little community. Highlights of the delusions: -One lady complained that local children had to dangerously cross "two lanes of bike paths and one lane of cars." No mention, of course, of the relative danger of a child crossing two lanes of opposite car traffic! -Someone posted a video of that viral story of the road cyclist illegally passing a schoolbus and hitting a little girl crossing the street, as evidence foe the "reckless disregard these cyclists have for our children" No mention of course, that the happy ending to this story was that the little girl was uninjured, and she was much better off than had she had been in a car collision. -When a Montreal group organized a bike ride through the bike path, they insisted this was an effort by the "bike agenda" to "make it look like the bike path is widely used." The so-called "Terrebonne Neighborhood Association" is a community of conspiratorially minded and self reinforcing Nimbys. They are so out of touch that they think the city is imposing this on them, and I haven't seen a single acknowledgement of the positives of having a cycling path.😅
At the risk of sounding 'ageist,' all those people in the meeting where old boomers. It's a comfort zone for them and it's rather narcissistic of them to assume that they are the only ones who benefit, or otherwise, from any sort of infrastructure. Times are changing - and they need to learn to change with it.
“Not everyone can travel by [transportation mode]” goes both ways, my friend. Not everyone can travel by car either
One thing I know for sure is NO ONE can travel by bike during Montreal's winter (the city this footage was taken from). Montreal's winter is -30 Celsius, 3ft of snow and 2 inches of ice on every surface for 3 to 6 months a year.
@@Not.a.bird.Personis this sarcasm? Montreal plows a network of main bike lanes and does have a lot of winter cycling. Although I believe the bike share "bixbi bikes" are put away in the winter.
@@hollylockhart9423 ''Montreal plows a network of main bike lanes and does have a lot of winter cycling.''
Non priority roads in the city can take up to a week or more to be plowed... Even if a couple lanes were plowed, that's a small minority of cases and it completely gloss over the fact that biking in the winter on average is just very dangerous in Montreal. This is a complete non answer.
@@Not.a.bird.Person Montreal winters ain't that bad anymore. Snowy/icy weather only lasts 2-3 months nowadays. Ice and snow is non-issue on city streets, It's the sidewalks that are slippery. -30 celcius? Only if you look at the wind chill temperature and even then, it's quite a rare occurrence (a few times per year at most). Winter biking is normal in many northern cities of Europe. It will soon be the same in Montreal.
@@The_Monolith Ok... so just because the really bad stuff is 2-3 months of not being able to bike safely we should still push for the ubiquitous adoption of vehicles that are a varying degree of unsafe to unusable for those months and ignore the lack of usability of like half some of the streets involved for this amount of time when parking is a varying degrees of hell everywhere in the city? That sounds like perfectly sound engineering to me...
As for Europre, people really need to stop comparing Canada to Europe... Europe is 17x denser as a region compared to Canada on average. The average distance between capital cities in Canada is the size of many European countries... sometimes combined. Canada is neither like Europe or anywhere close to it. Most big cities in Europe have another big city in every direction just 30-60 minutes away from them.
“This bike path is ageist and ableist” is absolutely beyond satire
As if it's not "ageist" to require drivers to pass vision and reaction tests
What difference does that make a car? If youre too old. You cant drive. And if you are disabled. You cant drive too. So what is the argument there? I dont get it.
was interesting as my Dad lost his driver's license at 80, but is still able to use his Bixi.
@@TheSegert If you are unable to drive or bike, you are still old enough to be driven around. The problem is almost always how to get into and out of transportation, when urban planners did not consider mobility challenged/visually impaired passengers.
- Walking across live lanes to get to a middle island on the street for a bus?
- Having no drop off spot cause of badly planned bike lanes?
They actually take that sort of thing into account in Amsterdam.
Montréal? Not so much.
Heck, you would think they would prioritize snow clearing of sidewalks and residential streets around schools. Nope
@@tommyshanks4198I live on a street with a primary school at the the end of the block. Our sidewalks are always cleared first. The pedestrian/bike paths are cleared too.
Montreal could definitely do more to help the visually impaired and others with disabilities. One way to start is to elect these people to the city and municipal councils. It worked in Vancouver, especially after they elected visually impaired city councillor and a quadriplegic mayor.
That saying, “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression" strongly applies to this. Changes for mobility options other than cars will happen in time because they are better for more people.
It's simply demented entitled boomers and their mob mentality - our way, no discussion, be part of the crowd, do as you were told, and dare you be anyhow different - religion, skin colour, music, cloth, relations, hair color - they will crucify you as a witch and heretic.
Except often these bike paths often make things better for everyone. They keep bikes out of roads for cars and off sidewalks were pedestrians are and were children play. This is just "change is bad"
@@1stdragon123 If it were change adding another lane favoring cars I doubt there’d be the same opposition.
Well said.
I heard that saying not Not Just Bikes first 😃
Assuming that old people cannot use a bicycle is by itself pretty ageist. Here in the Netherlands I frequently see a large portion of all cyclists in some areas being seniors.
Heh, my ~72 year old boss (trucking company here in northern Germany) drives to the company's location every Saturday for various reasons (normal business is only during the week, but he still does some stuff on Saturdays) and is currently under doctor's orders to use his bicycle for those Saturday trips 😄😊
So much for that "old people cannot use a bicycle" idiocy... 🤪
Most ppl suicidal enough to use the German Bicycle infrastructure are old ppl here. I cycle too but i walk most places because with my bicycle I'm forced to use the same roads as East-Germans that have a Mindset similar to those ppl in the Church(and sadly a bunch of Nazis as well) regardless of Age but like to "teach lessons" by almost murdering you with their car. All the fun stuff like Passing to close, passing then Brake checking, swerving towards you and of course completely ignoring you etc. I have my Bike for a few months now and I can count on one hand the ppl that even acknowledged my existence and paid proper attention to me ( hings like actually making Space for me in narrow points where I by law would have right of way, most ppl just drive straight at you with a slightly Braindead expression and then complain when you stand in front of them with nowhere to go)
Especially now with e bikes. Those old timers are fast AF XD
Every summer here (Finland) I play the game of how long it takes until I see an old man driving a bike around without a shirt. You would be surprised by how often that happens.
Maybe if more people used bicycles, they'd be able to exercise enough to maintain their mobility at older ages.
"it increases my trip from 0.7 to 2km"
Why on earth would you even drive for a 700 metre trip?
As someone who primarily rides and has limited access to a car. Sometimes it isn't the journey but it's the load or the passenger etc. but the general point of people driving distances that it's easier to walk drives me mad as well
for 2km I won't even bother using my bike lol
Car addiction, nothing more.
@@MikeBrown-dk7orI apparently have neighbours like that in Germany. One morning I was on the way to the next bakery by bike (about 500m).
And someone on the other side of the street was driving out of his driveway without looking in both directions.
Had I not stopped, even though I had right of way, he’d have had me on hood.
Guess where I met that oblivious carbrain again?
At the bakery. I was fuming inside.
Ill sure take my car to a 700m trip to the grocery store with two kids in diapers, summer or winter.
You guys really think you're making the world better by riding a pedal bike?
I am disabled. Outside of the house, I use either my wheelchair or my handbike. Things that reduce my mobility are construction sites where accessibility wasn´t part of the consideration when providing alternate routes, bins on sidewalks of busy streets, greenery next to sidewalks that is growing over de sidewalk making it too narrow, lack of transit options, lack of short routes without busy trafic I can´t navigate when I have brain fog. For routes that are too long, not accessible enough and don´t have transit options, I need to arrange someone to drive me.
Bike lanes tend to make my life a lot less complicated.
I am a disabled Dutchie. I cannot walk more than 200 m and I cannot ride a bicycle anymore. I need a car. But that does not mean I am against cycle paths. Both should be possible. Car and cyclists. I used to cycle everything within the city limits (unless I had to carry a heavy or voluminous load). Now I can't anymore, I am very happy with the parking spaces and roads for cars. You get my point, real freedom is that the infrastructure is able to facilitate both driving and cycling.
@@ronaldderooij1774 we are all envious of infrastructure there.
Here in North America, they paint lines on a road shared with trucks and call it a bike lane. Safe it is not.
It's flabbergasting how the people crying "It's Ableist!" have no clue about the experiences of the people they are purportedly advocating for.
I was riding the American River trail in Sacramento, CA a while back and meet a group of Russian men who had lost their legs in combat and were riding 3-wheeled hand bikes. I was amazed at their power and speed. It was so cool to ride with them - even though they left me in the dust!
@@ronaldderooij1774 Get a microcar. I've heard you can drive it in bike lanes with the right paperwork.
Making school districts accessible for children to cycle to school should be a priority
I grew up in a school district where I could walk to school all the way from K-12. It absolutely boggles my mind that there are schools that are designed to be impossible to walk or bike to, and that parents think this is a good thing.
Narrowing the street also slows down traffic so that's a plus in a school zone. It also probably drives these people nuts when they see cyclists ride past them unimpeded by traffic.
George Carlin was right, boomers are selfish people.
Bet they want the kids to Ride in a circle in the paths around the schools. Like a gym class thing.. But Really sounds like It's more then bikes Almost like the need help and hugs
I second this, I remember back in elementary school it wasn't until the seventh grade that I started to be more observant and see that the same kids would always bike past me while I walked to school and wow, there's a bike rack at the front entrance of my school LOL. After that, biking became my main mode of transportation, but if there had been clear cycling infrastructure in my neighbourhood, I may have started biking sooner (and make things safer). Now that I'm older, I've realize how biking is seen as a recreational activity and not a mode of transportation in most North American neighbourhoods which is sad
"How do we transport our children?" The answer is obviously the CHILDREN BIKE TO SCHOOL!!!
I used to be a proponent of space exploration, until a passing astronaut flipped me the bird. Now I'm filing an injunction against NASA.
Way to follow through!
Unbelievable. Astronauts really are the worst!!!
When they tell stories like that I always have to wonder about the context like just maybe they gave her a one finger salute because she was obstructing a designated bike path? We will never know.
Yes. It was like a whiny 8 year old went to an adult meeting. The old "someone misbehaved (if you can believe my claim)", so we should ban ALL activity of that nature.
Space junk
Somehow they think that a 2 ton vehicle capable of moving 100 mph is safer than a 200 lb. vehicle capable of moving 20 mph
20 lb
@@maythesciencebewithyourider+bicycle system weight would be approximately 200 lbs. 20 lbs doesn't include the engine.
That's an ebike, not an eighty lbs. kid on a 20lbs. bicycle
@@doris41236My ebike is 65 lbs.
Safer for *themselves*. Typical selfish myopic boomer perspectives... 🙄
I HATE the argument about ableism. People with disabilities have different needs!! I have epilepsy, and sometimes I’ve lost my license while I was adjusting my medication. In my case, prioritizing cars over bike lanes would remove the form of transit that is always available to me. Does that mean it’s also ableist to remove bike lanes, because I, a disabled person, would be inconvenienced? I wish these jerks would stop using disabled people as a weapon in this fight, because it’s clear they don’t value the full range of disabled people’s experiences.
Me too!!!!!! I bike everywhere its the only safe way for me to get around. Driving is so difficult with epilepsy, been going through it almost 30 years. I’d like to hear these peoples opinions if they would rather me have a seizure on the road or in a bike lane! Glad Im able to bike on sidewalks cause aint no way Im biking on the road
And then if a epileptic person had a seizure while driving and got a car accident those car people would just blame the epileptic person and say they shouldn't be driving.
They just dictate individual action like that and regurgitate their ignorance.
They don't think further how those disabled people can travel then if they can't drive like they told them.
And they still fight against non-car infrastructure.
It's like how many Americans just double down on individual responsibility and harsher punishment on drinking and driving.
Watch Yet Another Urbanist on how in America many times there isn't non-car transportation around bars. Many bars have a parking lot.
They don't value anything other than their own comfort and will use any argument they can to rationalize it.
Yeah I am 100 percent confident they don't make any other arguments to include disabled people in any other context.
Any decision that prioritises one class of people is ableist, is the point. Yes removing bike lanes would also be ableist, intentional or otherwise, though maybe it would be better to call it a trade-off.
My brothers and sisters, please pray for me in rural car obsessed America. The roads here have no shoulders let alone bike lanes, and everyone drive 50 MPH on the "residential" streets.
The suburbs aren't much better. Monster trucks and wank panzers everywhere. No bike lanes, rarely a shoulder. I cry sometimes when I see cities with really nice bike infrastructure.
@@chuckhunter77 I've seen videos of suburbs with no sidewalks or sidewalks that just randomly end. So you have to awkwardly walk in the street.
Then car people will just blame pedestrians when there are no sidewalks and those car people won't even look at how there isn't a sidewalk. They think people just want to endanger themselves walking on the road?
And sometimes non-drivers can't communicate to drivers there isn't a sidewalk or bike path either cause they can't hear in their cars, with the windows up, or they just angrily speed off before something can be said to them.
You would think drivers want non-car infrastructure to keep non-drivers off their roads too.
@@chuckhunter77"Wank panzers" LOL - is that what we call a 'Chelsea tractor' in the UK?
@@FordnanI'd assume it's what a funny Aussie here on YT calls Blobs. SUV's and "Crossovers" ..... i call them Straßenpanzer(Road Tank) and when it's electric its an E-Straßenpanzer XD
@@chuckhunter77suburbs of California are so fucking terrible bro
If you’re 0.7 km from the store why are you driving there in the first place.
Buddy I've known families that drive just 100 meters to the grocery store. Even as I've proven to them several times that it's literally faster to walk. And yet they still do it because they don't want to carry groceries for 100 meters, only for the little bit from the store to their car and from their car to their front door.
@@drdewott9154 People who live that close here, take the full shopping trolly home and then bring it back again.
I've also seen shopping trolleys sitting outside people's homes that they take back to the store as their personal trolley at the next shopping trip, but you're not really supposed to do that...
@@drdewott9154 yeah funny that they have enough money for a car associated trip and not for a wheels basket/trolley... oh that's right doesn't look cool using old people stuff, flipping muppets!!!
@@drdewott9154 They should start seeing the walks as cardio & the carrying of groceries as weightlifting.
"Do you even lift bro???"
I lift alright, I lift my shopping bags full of bottles, cans, & frozen goods for ten to fifteen minutes (shop to bus stop, bus stop to home)
Cheaper than a gym membership, & saves time trying to find THAT parking spot
Exactly. I live 2 miles from work and a grocery store. I don't even own a car. I sold it for an escooter and have absolutely zero regrets. I've got over 2200 miles on my scooter. A cars just doesn't make sense in my situation
As a disabled person who relies on mobilty aids, these people’s perspective is dangerous to my mobile freedom. Disabled people want better infrastructure. We want positive changes like bike lanes.
People like these,reacting like i did back in the 90s in the Netherlands.
Its an learning curve,whit some moments of shame
technically, isn't bike lane a better option for people in a wheelchair ? i know most of the time sidewalk aren't really that flat and can have obstacles
It's crazy to see the people in this video pretending to give a single shite about disabled people so they can justify driving their 2 ton vehicles 0.7km.
@@melissafonteny5538making bike lanes or sidewalks that are continuous, where they don’t dip down to street level, would go a great deal in helping everyone be able to move. More specifically anyone riding a mobility scooter, walking with a cane, etc. basically make the 2+ ton vehicle going over a “speed bump” so that everyone traveling outside of a vehicle has better/safer infrastructure
The thing is, they don't actually care about you, they just say they do because they think it strengthens their argument
Old people: Kids these days are always in their homes on their stupid devices. Back in my day we was always outside playing.
City council: Makes an actual effort to encourage young people to go outside by making the streets safer.
Old people: NO NO NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!!!
I swear to God old folks rob the joy of young people on purpose.
Those same people are often the ones who complain about the noise of kids playing and accuse them of being hooligans.
@@Technomonkey887precisely.
@@Technomonkey887 It's probably the same people who forbid families with kids from renting apartments in their property.
They're selfish. They literally don't care about the younger generations.
@@Technomonkey887 I had seen that a few times as a kid back in the late 2000's. Those same people be complaining on Facebook about how kids don't engage in physical sports anymore and how they were the superior generation lmao.
As a Dutch person I can laugh about this. The reasons they give are ridiculous.
"It reduces mobility" No: When more people use a bike for trips they don't need a car for, You will eventually not have to wait for hours on a longer trip using your car. So it actually increases your mobility.
It also increases mobility for people not abla to drive cars for whatever reason. It also makes traffic in general way safer if cars have to go around and people choose bikes.
There's also the fact that electric bikes are a thing, increasing mobility on a bicycle over bigger distances even more.
These people really have no idea what they're on about lmao.
I moved to the Netherlands and love the infrastructure for bikes here. I find the "agest" argument to be especially absurd, I regularly see people as old and older than these people biking. If you never learned how to ride a bike just say that.
@@jacoblopez4419 It is ridiculous. My grandpa stopped driving the last 5 years of his life, and then rode his ebike every day until he was hit by a car. The road he was hit on now has bike lanes thankfully.
@h82fail
I'm sorry to hear but I have to say it's such a perfect example of the problem here.
Cars are big and dangerous and so many people are just complaining everything else should be moving out of the way for them.
America, we never let logic and reason stand in are way.
From Not Just Bikes “car drivers suddenly really care about the things their cars emit only when they’re not allowed to drive wherever they want whenever they want and as fast as they want”
Edit: This blew up in a day
NJB sucks. His extreme doomerism is just as big a a threat to North American urbanist efforts as are the car-addicted suburbanites.
Someone doesn't understand efficiency.
@@JsnHendrik Ah yes, because cars are so efficient. They're bulky, unsafe, dirty, and expensive, but god forbid the city install a speed bump when too many people die at an intersection; that would make my car less efficient!
@@JsnHendrikOne day you'll learn that efficiency is one of the least important virtues of design in every field, if not outright irrelevant. If it saves money people are going to trick you into thinking it's the most important thing. Did they do it already?
Yeah. "I'm so concerned about the extra CO2 from extra driving distances caused by bike lanes," says the SUV driver. . .😅
Anti-bike and anti-pedestrian sentiment is entirely based on incorrect presumption that roads are the exclusive domain of motorists. This is why some motorists get triggered when they see bicycles on the road. They view them as trespassers. Meetings like this are basically an extension of road rage, where motorists are unable to comprehend that the reason they are stuck in traffic is because there are too many cars on the road---and not because of bicycles.
They're stuck on the incorrect assumption that cars are the _one and only_ solution to transportation. Walking is impossible, because everywhere they want to go is too far to walk. Bikes are seen as "toys" for children or a sport that has no real practical purpose outside of recreation. Buses are too few and inconsistent. Therefore, anything that impedes the use of their car is an assault on their mobility.
@@user-iw5mp5th6d cyclists and pedestrians are taxed the same as motorists for road maintenance. With you know, city/local, property, school, etcetera taxes. In fact, cyclists do less damage to the roads than motorists do.
Yes, great point. Also, people have a difficult time understanding any change as a possibility. When it does happen, they usually come up with uncritical judgements. There’s a major road where I live, that planners proposed bike lanes be installed. The storeowners protested it and defeated it. Fact: I never go to a store there, a bakery, because it’s too dangerous to get there by bike. So, they’ve actually lost a customer.
@@user-iw5mp5th6d "It's too cheap", what's that for an argument? Just because Car's are expensive, it's not the cyclists fault.
Response: “Anti-bike and anti-pedestrian sentiment is entirely based on incorrect assumption that roads are the exclusive domain of motorists.”
To which you: “No, but YEAH!!! If they use OUR roads they should be taxed just like motorists”💭!!!💭
Oh, BTW, road infrastructure comes out of the pockets of *every taxpayer*. Non-drivers are forced to pay for infrastructure catering to motorists’ desires and expectations while having to deal with inadequate non-motoring-centred infrastructure like all-ages appropriate safe cycling infrastructure.
Case closed.
I like this direction that urbanism RUclips is headed. We need more involvement in local politics.
Local is great! You can make a big difference with small numbers. Instead of being 1 in millions, you are one of ~50 that actually consistently involved.
@@Life_as_Game totally.
We can help steer conversation from doom and gloom to asking for more progress on bike networks.
This isn't the direction of RUclips. This is the direction of your personalized algorithm. The anti-cyclists get their own video recommendations in their echo-chamber.
@@Hexagonian so you really watched the unhinged rambling of the people at that meeting and went away agreeing with it?
@@tezpokemonmaster No. I'm also in NotJustBikes/DutchUrbanPlanning RUclips. I think its very important to keep in mind that the internet is set up to radicalize us, regardless of the topic, and we can't know if our opinion is that of the majority or if we are in our bubble. It's important to keep advocating for bike friendly infrastructure because we are very far from having "made it".
As someone with disabilities I am so fed up of us being used as anti cycling weapon.
I had fibromyalgia. Cycling pumps oxygen through the body - that was what I needed to wake up & get moving.
My spine seizes up without movement. Cycling helps.
I'm female and older I wouldn't feel comfortable driving. I can bike & stop at any pub if need be.
I'm also dyslexic and wouldn't be comfortable driving a machine that could kill someone.
I can't afford a car or lessons even if I wanted to.
Less cars, less pollution, easier for those with breathing issues x
I am disabled and would LOVE more bike paths and lanes! They mean less air pollution. They mean less road noise. They mean more people can safely travel in more ways. If I had better bike pathing near my home, I would work towards investing in an ebike with pedal assist options.
Some cities and states are more bike friendly to everyone.
Someone gets it!
Yeah, in france, people in wheelchair, do use bike path to roam around.
Their arguments are totally moot.
Here in the Netherlands I've seen plenty of different transport used in our bikelanes people on ebikes (my mom actually has one, since her knee operation a normal bike is a bit too difficult for her), people in sitbikes where you use your hands to pedal , blue numberplate mopeds (allowed to drive max. 25km/h) and people in power wheelchair's in the bike lane. It is accessable for all people who want to get from A to B without suffering from traffic. I find it truely laughable the arguments that are brought forward in this conference.
I highly recommend trying out an electrically supported bike. It's great for exercise of ROM and it is just lovely to cycle around. I wish you all the best luck with that. Would you be looking into something mountainbikey or more dutch-upright-cycle-bikey?
I just died of cringe hearing those comments in the meeting
Come on, if one cyclist gives you the finger, that is a valid reason to ban them all.
All vertically challenged by the look of it
I went through a city council meeting last week that added bike lanes on a street and it was word for word the same thing. It was actively frustrating. Do they have a script they all follow? Actual madness.
Don't worry, we passed the bike lanes!
Not as hard as I’m dying of cringe reading all you gentrifiers and your complete lack of empathy for anyone who disagrees with you.
@@se-kmg355Right uh huh. Cause you’ve never judged anyone by what they look like before
Bike paths aren't ableist. It IS ableist to assume that all people with disabilities can't bike, and to be unaware of handbikes and other adaptive bikes
And the fact that people in wheelchairs and electric mobility devices use bike paths!
We should force all the poor people to bike! Rain, snow, excessive heat? Tough. You can bike there! Cars are for elitist snobs who value their time. /s
Handbikes and adaptive bikes are, to be honest, kinda terrible. Unless you get a specialty bike that allows you to bring your wheelchair along, folks like myself who use chairs are pretty excluded from bike paths. There are the types that attach directly to your chair, but they're unstable, slow, and kinda dangerous.
Please don't read this as opposition to bike paths. Just pointing out that adaptive equipment is not really as good as able-bodied legs.
@@CountJeffula if you do not want to bike do not bike but do no forbits other people to bike.
@@CountJeffula you can still drive on the roads, no one is banning cars...
The apparent age of this crowd is not lost on me... whatever happened to leaving the world a better place for our kids and grandkids?? The older generations seem to have taken a 180° on this concept and have decided that their own personal ease and comfort is the only thing the world should be concerned about.
because they were those kids and they never grown up so now they have to give it to the new kids but they refuse, they cant accept they need to give the world to the new kids, its their world that the adults give it to them and only them
"I'm a biker" is a dead giveaway someone is anti-cycling. They do this all the time.
"I do in fact have black friends. But..."
That and also "We're not anti-bike lane! We just want to make smarter decisions where we locate bike lanes!"
Some of my best friends are cyclists...
One critic, at another event, introduced themselves by saying, "I have eleven bikes."
Ask them how many trips they made by bike in the month, and to where. These people haven't biked since 1972.
"avid cyclist" - drives his mountain bike on the rack on his SUV to a trailhead surrounded by a big parking lot on the weekends; would never consider riding to work, or the store, or anywhere else local & practical
I passed away and then resurrected and then passed away again from hearing these comments.
You and me both 😆. It was so absurd.
I for one cannot believe that the lady that asked "who here drives a car??" was actually surprised that eveyone raised their hand 😂
This video (and others here on Oh The Urbanity!) encouraged me to write to my local councilor (municipality in Ontario) about a more bicycle friendly and walkable neighborhood. To my surprise he wants to meet next week to hear more! Here I thought I had no power to make change.
“Not everyone can travel by car, and why should we be made to feel that we should?”
Yes! Perfect question to ask in North America, particularly the US I understand, where many cities seemed to be designed solely with motorists in mind.
@@danyoutube7491 You are correct. Many cities and suburbs in the US don't even have sidewalks.
It was amazing that by putting down paint and a few flexi posts to make it seem like it's safer to bicycle is limiting choice. She was worried about "forcing" people to bicycle, but wouldn't see the problem of forcing people to drive everywhere.
Most of the world has had roads for far longer than weve had cars, I suppose the US and Canada are kinda unique in that aspect.
@@44nobody I'm in Houston, TX. Building sidewalks is not mandatory. I would guess at least 50% of the streets have none. As for bike paths, pffft!
If you can afford a car, you can afford an electric sit down scooter. The inverse is not true. Cars are not affordable for everybody. When a car is more accessible than a bike/scooter/walking THAT is restricting mobility.
EXACTLY 💯. Typical boomer affluenza ruining life for the rest of us by being selfish and lacking in perspective due to disproportionately benefitting from wealth inequality...
The most dangerous person on the road in the mornings is parents going to morning drop off speeding in their SUV. LEt your kids bike to school, see if they enjoy it. I used to walk to school everyday it took roughly 30 minutes to get to school. I don't think i ever thought about taking the bus. I certainly never expected my mom to drive me.
my mom was only nice enough to drive me in the mornings because i couldn't take the bus to school in the morning and honestly it felt dangerous even as a pedestrian to walk the 30 minutes in the morning, the amount of times i've seen flowers on the sides of the road in that area is honestly distressing in hindsight
I don't think they're the most dangerous -- the drunks are likely the most dangerous. But they are dangerous because they're rushing and not thinking clearly and can't see over the giant hood with the height of the SUV. Impatient people and drunks and the selfish -- and everyone fits into one of those, pretty much.
Drivers texting, fiddling with the infotainment, eating/drinking, applying makeup... alcohol and other recreational drugs, not to mention the sheer number of people on prescription meds with warning labels about driving.
Parents aren’t the most dangerous but they are a little annoying
There’s a nice meme of the Challenging Question Goose demanding of a parent “Why do you want to drop your kids as close as possible to the school, [name]?” (The obvious answer, of course, is the desire to protect their own children from being injured or killed by drivers doing just as they are doing.)
As a young Montréalais, I have been biking to school throughout high-school using an old bike lane. Today, the new REV alliows me to continue getting to [m'y full time occupation] by bike daily, in the middle of downtown, something I would never have been able to consider doing before. I am a firsthand witness of how all the new bike paths around Montréal really do have an impact on young biking to school! Let''s go bike paths!
How is adding a form of safe mobility reducing mobility?
Who is more mobile?
- Someone who needs a car for everything?
Or
- Someone who can choose between bus, bike, walking, driving, scooter, skates, renting a car, sharing a car, calling Uber or ridesharing service? And ideally having everything prepared for disabled people, so there are no harsh steps and people are protected from being run over by cars?
Logic...
That's just a bad faith argument though. In Montreal (the city where this footage was taken from), the city is basically a blizzard 3-6 months a year with 3ft of snow and 1-2 inches thick of ice everywhere. If you reduce car options by reducing parking spaces and reducing the amount of lines in favor of biking lanes... you are depriving people intentionnally of one of the only safe and practical transport option they have for 3 to 6 months a year. You can't walk, bike, skate or do any active type of transport during the winters here.
Buses and metro (same company) in Montreal are already unprofitable and on life support because the city is incapable of properly managing it and capacity is already full on most of the existing routes which are not going to expand because... well the other ones are already unprofitable.
How about the other options you say? Well you can't service thousands/millions of people by Uber or Ridesharing if... you remove the car infrastructure that facilitated those things working...
Last thing is : you can't support jobs that are close enough for walking to make sense if the density in place was made for people to go to work by car previously. It just doesn't make sense to break the infrastructure needed for a settlement to have the density it currently has. The design is already done and built.
@Not.a.bird.Person other cities in Northern europe dope have this problem with the winter. Tou should demand more action from your local government.
@@strellettes8511 I swear everyone here has a fetish for Europe... but as I mentionned in many other comment sections here, Europe is not Canada and Canada is not Europe and people are dumb to compare them. The average distance between capital cities in Canada is larger than entire European countries stacked next to each other... Canada is so scarcely populated in general that road infrastructure was the only logical choice in many areas which means that by default, large population centers need to be adapted for transport flows from primarily car driven communities for economic reasons. Canadian cities then evolved from this and many of them are fairly young in comparison to European cities and evolved in an environment when cars were booming. Large population centers require large flows of goods to come from the outside, in an environment where there is a capital city in every direction every 30-60 minutes of driving it's much easier to have a large rail capacity and much easier to have dedicated roads that may be covered for cycling. In an environment with open roads for cars everywhere, adaptation is much trickier for biking.
As for winter, it's also 100% more unsafe to ride a bike during winter than it is during summer. It is in fact illegal to ride a motorcycle during winter in Quebec for the same reasons that next to no one uses a bike during winter here... roads are slippery and an inherently unstable vehicle carries inherent dangers in that environment. It's also unsafe to ride a bike with low visibility during a storm, unsafe to ride them in winter gear designed to handle comfortably -20C to -40C.
I actually don't believe the ''there is ubiquitous winter bike riding in some places'' argument because it makes no logical sense for anything passed -15C. A place like Quebec has winters with literal ice forming on your nose and mouth while breathing and removing it even from roads is a challenging business with limited success passed a certain temperature because it just rapidly comes back after removing it...
@@Not.a.bird.Person You're just ignorant is all. No ones biking from city to city btw, were talking inner city commutes.
@@Not.a.bird.PersonAgain, why expect mass transit to be profitable on its own, but not have the same expectations on a road system?
Besides, bicycle transport is for inner city transport. Sure, it's not sensible for inter-city, but it can at least reduce the congestion within the city.
Everything about that meeting was pure selfishness in action. 100% an example of "If I lose a convenience, it has to be evil"
People like this make me so angry. Never any thought to anyone but themselves, ever.
Interesting is the argument: "As long as they don't take care about the rules we shouldn't build cycle paths". Yes, and for every judged car driver we remove one road project....
@@ralf4640 We don't care about their rules because they don't care about us. It's a vicious cycle.
If they could be American they would be MAGA
They are juste unable to see past the tip or their noses. Thus any decision that will benefit the community before themselves will be a bad one for them because of their space-limited sight (limited to themselves and sometimes their family) and any decision that aim to long-term, diffuse effects will be a bad one for them because of their timed-constrained sight (constrained to literally right now without any consideration for the past or the future, I genuinely didn't see a honest argument brought by the anti-bike community that could consider a situation any different but the one their are currently in)
And they are numerous, and they are vocal, and they put all the weight on decisions that affects the whole community for decades, but why should they care because they are not the ones who are or will be negatively impacted by their will the maximize their personal confort without regard to anything else ?
@@tesseract2144they're not _unable_ to see past their noses; they're _unwilling_
I feel like a lot of these people view biking as this occasional, frivolous activity and don't understand that it's a legitimate mode of transportation used by thousands of people everyday. That and they don't want to share the road. They've always struck me as selfish and close-minded...and honestly not the brightest. Their kids probably use bikes and will be a lot safer with the new bike lane. How can you be against that?
Oil lobbyist propaganda and its consequences have unmistakingly been a disaster.
In my community all the infrastructure to "encourage bicycling" benefits only the occasional, frivolous users: it generally makes my bicycle commuting worse.
In NA, cycling is unfortunately considered just a recreational activity instead of a viable mode of transportation (and it has been that way for everyone in living memory). So it is considered frivolous to cater to people who have time and money to be cycling for fitness. People really do not understand that the main point is to expand cycling to everyone and not have it just be for the fitness enthusiasts.
@@davidmarsh3104 Provide one example
@@machtmann2881 The dynamics are more complicated than that. Bike lanes are broadly popular, which is why so many cities in US and Canada are able to complete bike lane projects despite a few NIMBYs. On street bike lanes are treated as serious but underprotected infrastructure, while off street paths are treated as purely recreational trails.
I remember sitting in on a town meeting about the proposal to build a road that connected this dead end neighborhood to the hospital parking lot. The goal was to provide emergency response vehicles an additional path to access some neighborhoods easier. The residents were concerned it would encourage people to go speeding through their neighborhood and run over their children.
No one is going to go through your neighborhood, the only things it would connect to is the hospital. And you guys would have super fast direct access to the hospital. Are you saying access to the hospital is a bad thing? One of the adults even brought their child up so she could break down in tears about how this neighborhood is her home and the city is trying to destroy it and take away their fun spaces.
It was the most outrageously stupid and funny town meeting I had ever sat in on.
The issue is this mindset of "anything that impedes me in any way is evil" isn't limited to bike paths. It's anything and everything.
The idea that anything these people want is good, and everything else is bad, is an inherently destructive mindset, and these types tend to bring that everywhere they go.
It's effectively what American Conservatism has sadly devolved into over the years. That and "anything the Dems do is evil, we must do the opposite"
''The idea that anything these people want is good, and everything else is bad, is an inherently destructive mindset, and these types tend to bring that everywhere they go.''
How exactly would you describe someone who wants to tear down perfectly fine roads in favor of bike lanes for their own desires at the expense of the majority of the population who don't want them for sometimes good reasons?
As a sidenote, the city from the footage shown is Montreal (I've lived there 8 years). Montreal is a blizzard at -30 Celsius with 3ft of snow and 2 inches thick of ice on every surface for 3 to 6 months a year. How exactly is removing car lanes to put bike lanes a good idea in that kind of area? The bike lane literally sits empty for half the year with no possibility to be used. No one is going to wear a 2 inches thick coat, winter boots and half an inch thick mittens to ride a bike that will fall off randomly and dangerously at the first ice plate and with 20mph winds of -30C air in their face. With this context in mind, please tell us again about how destructive this ''mindset'' that you describe is?
@@Not.a.bird.Person
1. Bike lanes are good, actually, because cyclists aren't the only person using them.
2. They might need a little more maintenance, like salting, but I doubt they'll remain completely unused.
3. Car lanes take up far more space. Some roads even have 7 lanes on each side. Imagine if that was a bike path, or, you know, a train?
4. They didn't even tear down the road, they just put up some cones, and it was never even mentioned what they'd do in the winter.
The entire point of my comment was these people were getting territorial over something that was ultimately just an inconvenience. They didn't know anything about what a bike lane would provide, and didn't even follow the rules of driving they complained about.
And my final point was that's an attitude that goes towards things like the job market ("Nobody wants to work these days!") or the economy ("Just stop buying coffee once a day and you'll be able to buy a luxury car!").
@@oshawott4544 ''1. Bike lanes are good, actually, because cyclists aren't the only person using them.''
Pointless value judgment at best and doesn't address a single concern I've mentionned. Ideological drivel at worst.
''2. They might need a little more maintenance, like salting, but I doubt they'll remain completely unused. ''
There is a limit to how much you can make a path practical to use passed a certain termperature and bikes are inherently more dangerous to use on slippery roads due to the static instability of the vehicle. The point is maintenance will not solve the lack of safety for winter biking in Quebec. Motorcycles are literally illegal in winter in Quebec because of this.
''3. Car lanes take up far more space. Some roads even have 7 lanes on each side. Imagine if that was a bike path, or, you know, a train?''
I don't care what space something takes if it is designed intelligently and practically. It fundamentally is of no consequence to me if a road has 1, 6 or even 10 lanes if it has a given purpose and it is fulfilling it. Bike lanes conversions, however, are done at the detriment of existing infrastructure in nearly every case they are implemented unless they are included in the initial design. *This* is the real issue. It boils down to unintelligent use of space and degradation of public services for the majority.
''4. They didn't even tear down the road, they just put up some cones, and it was never even mentioned what they'd do in the winter.''
That's a distinction without a difference. There is no functionnal difference between tearing down a road and repurposing it for bike lanes since functionnal use is lost for cars. As for winters.. I've lived in the city shown for 8 years. I've seen what they do... the answer is they are basically forbidden areas on a street that no car is allowed in at any time of the year... which is just a waste of space for ideological purposes.
''The entire point of my comment was these people were getting territorial over something that was ultimately just an inconvenience. ''
It might be just an ''inconvenience'' to you when you look at it from a point of view of never having thought of the city involved before watching this video... Here's another point of view : what should I do if I have one of those lovely bike lanes coming to my street that is parking deprived already and I need my car to get to work 30km away because there is no functionnal alternative and biking is never going to happen in a million year during a snow storm? The answer is : I am forced to move out of the city. What do I do if the next apartment I move to costs twice as much because of an ongoing housing crisis in Canada? That's right, I am now significantly poorer because of terrible city planning and people like you who like to push for ideologies over rationality. *This* is the kind of inconvenience we are talking about to the people involved. This is why those people hate this.
Clearly you do not and have never owned property. The people's reaction is classic NIMBY.
"it is a concerted effort to reduce peoples mobility" -- Token Oil Lobbyist
Hey, don't make fun of her. It's hard to remember Fox News talking points from memory when you're under all of that public speaking pressure! /s
And yes, there are confused Canadians who watch Fox News and don't realize the government they complain about is in a different country.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is an oil lobbyist.
@@VipericVampire no, but the one speaking in corpoese is.
@@VipericVampirethey might as well be
Only they’re doing it pro-bono
@@VipericVampire No but it's pretty obvious where she got her prefabricated talking point... an oil lobbyist
I don't trust these elderly audience members with a car. They look physically incapable of safely driving down the street.
"I couldn't figure out the signs and the road"
Like bruv, hand in your licence.
lol yes.
I so far have not a single person who is still allowed to drive but unabee to use a bike, trike, mobility scooter etc. on a bike lane. Bike lanes increase mobility, not reduce it.
@@steemlenn8797 Yeah, I have a family member with one leg. He rides a bike.
In 2021 a 79 year old woman woman in London Ontario in Canada (What NJB calls Fake London) murdered an 8 year old child and maimed 7 other children. They were girl scouts selling cookies in the neighborhood when she hopped the sidewalk travelling 120+ km/h. The road speed limit was 50 km/h
Her sentence? 2 years of house arrest!
Damn right! But saying that would be ageism, so instead we should propose driving reevaluation tests every year or two. If they will react with "that's anti motorist discrimination!", then we can make an experiment on who better navigates the streets: cyclists or drivers.
I would continue author argument analogy with flight certificate by saying that aviation authorities require from older pilots more frequent reevaluation for obvious reasons. And flying have a common theme with driving - humans don't naturally posses knowledge and experience since it's unnatural to us.
After all, they are just a bunch of hypocritical elitists, who can't comprehend that they don't "own" the streets because they are public , and thus should be equally managed.
IMHO, I have zero hope to change some boomer NIMBY mind, but at least other locals won't get brainwashed by their rhetoric
This is a good example of why cities should be built to be walkable from the beginning. Once something is built, it becomes very hard to change.
NDG is extremely walkable, though. This area is around Monkland Village. Given that, I agree with more bike lanes. However, I do believe consultation should have happened. I also know that in one area, the street was narrowed to the extent that the bus could not turn into it; this was in a neighbouring area, not NDG. I think the implementation could be better. I can imagine that it might be challenging for people who have a hard time walking (actually, I know because I have a family member who uses a walker and I am basically in this area) and who are dropped off by a car or by assisted transportation to walk through a bike lane in order to get to the sidewalk, particularly in winter when Montreal streets are icy. Like I said, I support bike lanes, but the lack of consultation did not help the cause. I simply wanted to point out that this area is extremely walkable and is an amazing neighbourhood, with the kind of mixed density for which Montreal is renowned. Cycling is not as big in NDG, but the people who live in the area do like to walk over cycling because you do not need a bike to walk to the corner or just a block ot two away.
Ageist ! I just turned 65 have type 2 diabetes,hypertension, an irregular heartbeat and a stoma. Just bought a roadbike!
I would have recommended an ebike, because they tend to get ridden more, but if you do the miles, your condition will improve. I'm 62 and decades of bike commuting have allowed me to stay away from the medical industrial complex. Have fun!
Enjoy! Stay safe!
my mom was 62 when i was 24 and i watched her cycle up a hill that i had to get off my bike and walk up, its not that bike lanes are ageist its just that these people don't exercise they drive 700 meters instead of walk 7-10 minutes
Ride safe bro!
I wish you many enjoyable miles of cycling
Listening to these people raises my blood pressure.
I had to control my vomit reflex.
Yeah same
Amen!
Not as high as their blood pressure probably is
I had a stroke four minutes in
Pro bike lane people are always like: "Studies consistently show this will reduce the number of kids we kill, and also this is more efficient in terms of travelers per square meter of road, and bikes do less road damage than cars because they weigh less so it's more more affordable to maintain over the long term."
Anti bike lane people: "You hate your community, and there's a vast secret conspiracy by You Know Who to trap us in our neighborhoods."
And it's a real failure of the public education system that any people consider category two to be good and convincing argumentation to support a position on optimal infrastructure mixes.
It has now become easier than ever to push counternarratives direct-to-audience with tiktok.
Ask the anti bike people if they know that cars are a conspiracy by You Know Who to make child and fentanyl trafficking easier. They added a new lane to the highway in my area and now MS-13 lives nextdoor to me.
Government kills far more people than bike accidents ever will. And yet you're going to give them more power?
And most ironically, the thing that _actually_ traps people in their home/neighborhood is car dependent status quo they're defending.
But of course they don't understand this, because car dependency only traps the young, the old, the disabled and the poor and those people don't _genuinely_ care about any of these groups.
Maybe they'll understand it in the near future, when it becomes normalized for their fancy new cars to require a breathalizer test to start (such law already being debated in several countries) and can remotely be immobilized by the stealership or scamufacturer in case you're behind on your mortgage or subscription payment (some stealerships already do that) because all corporations nowadays want to sell their products without transferring full ownership to the buyer, aka the new rightful owner, since the technology (connected services) to retain control over things you no longer physically possess now exists and regulators/consumer protection agencies do nothing against these abusive business practices!
Who is "You Know Who"?
I see maybe two people in the entire room under the age of 50. So basically it is a bunch of old curmudgeons who just want to keep kids off their lawns.
My neighborhood has bike lanes on all major streets. My only complaint is that they got cheap with it and only painted lines for the lanes. The bike lanes are much better when they have physical barriers like pylons or curbs to separate the space for drivers. In many places, these lanes have parking for parks and schools. The neighborhood consistently ranks among the most desirable in the city, partially because of the bike infrastructure. Your kids aren't dodging moving cars just to ride their bikes.
Every school should have safe bike paths surrounding them.
Are you crazy ? Then kids will be tempted to get there by bike !
I agree! That's absolutely I agree with
It is honestly remarkable to me that some of the most dangerous roads in the city are outside schools at drop off time...and the cause of that danger is 100% the parents of all the children who are in grave danger.
@@xouxofuloh… my… god… Big Bike was behind this all along.
@DanielBrotherston
I had to stop cycling to school as a kid after a driver decided parking in a no parking zone on top of the cycle lane I was in was the right decision.
My bike was ruined, she was angry at me for being in her way, and although I was unharmed I decided cycling simply wasn't worth risking my life when a parent could care so little about another childs life.
I think making a dedicated drop off zone and bike lane that can't be occupied by cars is one of the smartest things they could do, it's so much safer.
"I had this one bad experience with a biker once!"
Yeah, and you probably had 100x more bad experiences with a driver.
At least one per week IMX.
In my observation. There is the same proportion of idiots riding bikes as there is with cars. but bikes have the statistical advantage of...you know, not being a two ton metal box that goes 70 km/h and skip stops in school neighborhood.
@@fredbyoutubingif an Idiot gets out of their Car and onto a Bicycle then they're still the same Idiot. But yeah the difference is like you said how much Damage they can do
You have to wonder what she did to warrant being flipped off. 😅
@@fredbyoutubing It's hard to say for me, I encounter drivers much more than bikers. I generally go no bike lanes that don't have too many turns
I'm NOT a cyclist, and I have no sympathy for those people in that meeting.
They should have been honest by saying "We don't want bike lanes." Let's take a vote: Who doesn't want bike lanes? raise your hand. Instead they made themselves vulnerable by making reasons that the opposition can blow holes through.
You don't need to use certain transportation to be pro option
You know who doesn't every have trouble finding a parking spot? A bicyclist. Long as you have a chain, you can park.
I love how they say that cyclists don't follow road laws, when I see dozens of cars running red lights on the daily, and the amount of cars that actually do their stop signs is very very little.
Plus these are all seniors speaking, and everybody knows seniors are the greatest drivers 🙄
"I only speed when..."
Also they often don't know the law and will become aggressive, verbally and at times physically assault bikers because they think they are right. Where I live it's allowed to overtake cars on the left assuming there is space - the number of times I saw cars purposefully turning towards the pavement to block the bike passing them last minute or freaking out when a bike passed them (including shouting verbal abuse from the windows or literally chasing the bike down the street and pulling people off their bikes...). They always think they ar heroes catching the evil biker law-breakers when they are not only in the wrong from the get go but also break the law by assaulting poeple.
I live in Australia. Australians are like this too. I hate it! Can barely afford rent. If I could sell my car, I could save money by buying a bike. I might have a little bit of disposable income left.
I don’t mean to sound ageist, and I know not all elderly people are like this; but it pains me that they refuse to support this because some hate progress or because they’re just misinformed.
Why can’t I choose to ride public transport, bike, or walk? Why do I need a car just to drive 15 minutes? Obviously I don’t want to ban cars, but there should be a few options for people to choose from.
All the people that complain about ‘limited mobility’ are the very people limiting my mobility.
These same people will complain about people on scooters on the footpath.
We very much have a car culture. It drives me to distraction (excuse pun). I ride my bike when I can (I have health issues) and I’ve always used public transport. I’m in my 60s. I just cannot understand the vitriol against cyclists. I can only explain it that maybe deep down they are envious of cyclists’ fitness and activity levels.
It’s really ironic how people join a gym, drive there, and then spend half hour on the stationary bike. Then rant and rave against cyclists!
@@HenriettaP There is no such thing as "car culture." It's all marketing and lobbying. That's not culture. Decades of manipulation explain the vitriol too. 😒
when I was in my 20's I was riding a bike to work. A man pulled up on his bike, beside me. We chatted for a while. I said "I hope to be riding to work when I'm 50." He said "why stop at 50, I'm 70" and then he put on some speed and left me in the dust.
Now I'm 50 and though I've switched to skateboarding (learned at 48 because of the dogs), I still travel about on my bike.
What I find ironic is the claim that cycle lanes are 'ageist' because elderly people can't ride a bike as well anymore.
So, to compensate that they can't react as fast anymore, we just put the elderly into big metal boxes that go faster than bikes, where if something happens it's much worse for everyone involved !
North American car culture got these people good. Don Draper would be proud, if he put down his cigar and wads of cash long enough to notice.
I'm mostly a pedestrian, and I'm not a big fan of cyclists.
Perfect example of "if you're used to privilege, ewuality feels like oppression."
Old people don't ride bikes? Never heard of Florida or Arizona. I'm a young senior who uses my bike to commute to and from work as a truck driver.
Bike routes would increase seniors' ability for mobility as well as for people on mobility scooters.
What you have there is a room full of miserable Karen's and Kevin's. They themselves probably need to get out on a bike and get some fresh air and exercise, which may improve their miserable attitudes.
Never heard of arthritis, vertigo or osteoporosis? There is also visual actuity, and simply not being used to look 6 ways for cyclists, skateboarders, escooters in addition to cars and trucks. It is not a surprise seniors especially opposed badly planned bike lanes.
Then there is the the biking crowd, which already skews differently from the general population. Not surprised ageist & ableist gets thrown around in these debates
My own opinion is that indeed, urban planning departments are ageist & ableist
I hate how otherwise innocuous names like Karen and Kevin have become hip trendy insults. However, you are 100% correct about everything else.
@@tommyshanks4198 I don't know many elderly people that are comfortable on a bicycle, but I would assume that the children who grow up in very bike friendly areas will have a lot less physical limitations when they're older. We have to start realizing that we may never see the complete benefits of these changes within our own lifetimes, but other people will greatly benefit down the line
@@tommyshanks4198 Well, when you have arthritis or osteoporosis it is important to remain active, especially with bone and musscle strengthening activities ! Cycling is ideal for that, especially with an e-bike the effort can be regulated to the user ... For bone strengthening more impact activities are advised
The neighbour of my mother has been spastic since youth, and currently, age late 50s/early 60s has artritis a chronic hernia. But in all those 3 conditions it is important for her to remain active. She goes on a daily walk for 40 minutes. She works in Home care and goes to her clients in several neighbouring villages by e-bike.
I think they meant to say that old people who never rode a bike still don't intend to. But they will scream if they have to be retested for driving ability.
And yet a fatality that occurred near another recently installed bike path was attributed to the driver, who subsequently gave up their license.
According to the coroner's report, the fatality had nothing to do with the bike path (Bourret) but local critics of bike paths continue to claim that it did. :(
Oh, I remember this one!
I got so pissed watching the video as it just showed one of the worst things that can happen in conferences: circlejerking.
There were almost no oppositional thoughts or critical thinking.
I thought echo chambers only existed online?? 🤔🤔🤔
It was such a hard watch bro 😭
That's why the video creator (don't know his name sorry) should have spoken up instead of making an online video criticising these people. Not like they're gonna watch this video. This comment section is just as much of a circle jerk as what we see in the vid tbh
@@mds3697 Absolutely. I personally wanted to attend this meeting but I had thought at the time that my voice would not be of any use to such a meeting.
Oh I was wrong, I would have provided great footage and a great reasonable anchor :P
@@mds3697 in a way, yes, but the video is directly responding their meeting. however I have to say it's not always a good idea to speak up against the majority in meetings like that, they are not there to listen to opposed opinion, and it's possible people will just kick you out of there. it's also not easy, because you are alone basically dealing with gish gallop, it's a lot of information you will have to check before giving a counter argument to them. meaning speaking up is probably a second meeting thing.
"Bike lanes reduce peoples mobility" ... The amount of facepalms I have for that remark knows no bounds.
"Bike lanes are agist and ableist". that couldn't be further from the truth and I as someone who has trouble riding a standard bike due to a knee injury am furious at that statement. If the only bikes that existed were the standard pedal bikes you commonly see, they may have a point. But eBikes exist to allow for people who have issues pedalling to enjoy biking. My mother-in-law who's in her senior years and also has a lot of health issues also has an eBike which she uses all the time. There are also adaptive bikes to support other forms of disabilities, including eScooter attachments for wheelchairs, or hand pedalling ebikes. Plus I've also seen my fair share of electric wheelchair users also use the bike lanes too. Mostly because they're safer than the streets and smoother than the sidewalks.
And of course these people conveniently forget that a lot of elderly and disabled people can't drive either.
Ebikes are also great for areas not built on flat land! I live in an area with a lot of steep hills where cyclists typically have to dismount and walk their bike up the hill. There's 3 hills like this between my home and work despite it being a relatively short distance, so I got an ebike to save time and energy.
I also have a neurological condition that doesn't necessarily prevent me from driving, but makes me feel less safe doing so. I sometimes zone out or get extremely distracted, which could result in an accident if I suddenly need to react very quickly. On a bike, i will usually go over a bump or begin sliding onto the raised lip on the side of the road and snap out of it. I'm sure one day this will cause me to get in an accident, and if it does, I want to minimize the harm I am capable of doing to others. I don't see how making the roads LESS dangerous for people like me is ableist!
My grandma quit driving her car at the age of 75 or so. She did not feel like she was able to drive properly anymore (which was good judgment imho). So she started riding a bicycle.
Eventually she stopped that too - she was a tiny lady, and e-bikes did not exist in her size yet (it's only fairly recently that e-bikes in smaller sizes appered on the market). But she did get another 7 years of mobility out of normal bikes before getting a taxi-bus pass, with which she could be picked up and dropped off by a taxi van wherever she wanted.
Saying that bike lanes are ageist is crazy. My Grandfather was riding his bike everywhere for his entire life. He still got over 100km a week when he was 85 and had cancer. If you say old people aren't able to ride a bike, they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a car.
Just a bunch of people complaining about change. You'll live, you'll adapt, but it's better for a greater good and future. I'd rather have safety for my child riding than a convenience for my driving. I'd love to have this in my city in California.
Before: You can drive, walk or take transit
After: You can drive, walk, take transit, cycle or use fast mobility scooters
Conclusion: "It is a concerted effort to reduce people's mobility"
Before: You can drive, walk*, or take transit**
*Walking will be unpleasantly close to fast moving vehicles, and possibly injure you, so nobody actually will, but we technically get to check the box.
** transit will be limited, inconvenient, costly, and slower, but we technically get to check the box.
Well, you missed the part where the 0.7km route became 2km, so the grocery trip now takes an additional 2 minutes. PER WEEK! 😢
@@michaelcartmell7428 Actually, there have been several incidents in Montreal over the past two decades of people on sidewalks injured or killed by motor vehicles coming up over the side and plowing into them.
@@olska9498 or they could get on a bike to go to the shop.
Maybe even walk.
I bet most of the time they are just nipping to the shop to get bread and milk.
That was my first thought. Bruh it’s .7km just hop on a bike.
I'm from this area and attended an information session and watched a city council meeting about the path. One thing I noticed is that the same few people end up speaking for everyone.
People who neither live on the street nor drive.
Welcome to political activism.
@@Schlabbeflickeryeah maybe. Cynical much? I too know the area. We just had a pitchfork meeting but on a totally different subject , a building for itinerants. They would show up each day for a bed that night. Fortunately the group didnt do a good job of choosing the right area and its all off. This crap on Terrebonne stinks of bs. What is wrong with an effing bike lane. Yes you might loose parking, but you should have a driveway! Lol! I realize driveways arent everybody’s luck. Still bike lanes , though a pain for us older richer folk, are kind neccesary. I wouldnt listen to these fools in their meeting
I saw my own street corner in the video and they changed the street to a one way with cycle lanes like mentioned. I was skeptical at the usefulness when this happened. This summer, I've seen so much more families with young children riding along together. People adjusted and now make it part of their commute.
Its crazy how closed minded these people are. Imagine getting exercise and living in a city with less noise and air pollution.
also wrt the ageist complaint: a lot of seniors also can't drive? i don't know what the laws around this are in canada, but practically speaking someone in a motorized wheelchair can absolutely safely use a bike lane
So true, also they tend to get hit by cars often!
I guess the biggest complaint there might not even be about the bike lanes but the bikes available to the public. Conventional mens bikes like those that are largely the only on the market in North America require lots of agility to get on and off. Especially compared to womens bikes with a step through frame like an Omafiets, which is more suited to the elderly. Here in Denmark we've had ads from the traffic safety council letting the elderly be aware of switching their bike to a more accessible one to lower the risk of getting hurt while getting on or off.
In the northern suburbs of Toronto I'm noticing an increasing number of elderly people using cargo tricycles (sometimes electric). They may not be able to ride a bicycle or drive a car anymore but at least the cycling infrastructure allows them to get to and from the grocery store independently within a reasonable amount of time.
Nursing homes are ageist; should be banned 😅
@@OntarioTrafficMan Where exactly do you see these people? I would love to have an electric cargo trike and its nice to hear that there are people in my region who are using them. I have never seen one in person but I would LOVE to have one!
Roads were originally made for pedestrians... and horses. They both shared the road equally and it was more a public space. Then because the auto industry was suddenly killing pedestrians it had to come up with a way to blame them so they invented the "jaywalking" law.
And they were unpaved or cobbled and covered in horse manure. Let’s go back to those days! Lmao. 🤦
@@CountJeffula streets are for everyone you *****
Technology has progressed since the invention of roads, and that means some things have changed as a result.
@@CountJeffula better than inhaling asphalt
@@kesslerdupont6023 I think you’re using roads wrong. Are you licking the pavement?
There is a general term: Motonormativity, essentially it refers to an idea that cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving.
I don't see a reason to use this over the already established "car dependancy"
@@hexzyle You can be dependent on your car and still realize that "this is not normal".
@@hexzyle ‘car dependency’ describes the built environment; ‘motonormativity’ describes the culture and development axioms that create it
I find 'car-brain' works well as a more colloquial term.
As someone with a disability that prevents me from riding a bike, the argument that bike lanes are ableist is absolutely absurd
Was anyone (other than Urbanity of course) at that "community meeting" under the age of 65?!
Based on this meeting my conclusion is we need to talk more about senior-friendly vehicles when we advocate for cycling infrastructure. Like pointing out that it enables faster mobility scooters and tricycles to keep people independently mobile even after they lose their license
YAH looks more like We need Elderly outreach.. And i hate bicycle is just a way to say help
@@OntarioTrafficMan The problem is less seniors and more that they spent their whole life inside cars. They'll see any car alternative as a downgrade to their lifestyle.
@@OntarioTrafficMan I would like to see more accessible bike models be introduced to Canadian cities. I have visited some bike shops in the Greater Toronto Area looking for a bike that would meet my needs- I can't balance on a bike very well due to some issues with my motor skills, and I would love to be able to have an adult trike or some form of other accessible model.
That's something I find interesting when seeing bike footage in european cities- there is often a lot more kinds of bike and bike-sized mobility options.
I don't think that bike lanes are ableist because there are many people who cannot drive due to age or a disability, and cycling has a less difficult learning curve, but because there are people like myself, and many other disabled people and seniors who would have troubles riding a two-wheeled bike, I see a huge need for there to be much more types of bike available.
@@OntarioTrafficMan good wide cycle paths are very suitable for eldely cyclists. And they also can be used for socalled mobility scootbmobiles. In Netherlands very important for elderly who can't/aren't allowed to drive anymore and have problems with cycling..
And when you make them wide enough they can be used for emergency response vehicles as well, when the road is congested !!
Bicycle Dutch : Who else benefit dutch cycling infrastructure.
ruclips.net/video/xSGx3HSjKDo/видео.html&ab_channel=BicycleDutch
The real safety double standard is how traffic violations by individual cyclists are always used to oppose infrastructure for bikes. But just a common traffic violations by individual dtivers are never used to oppose expanding car infrastructure. 🤬
You heard it here first: Bike lanes reduce the people’s mobility
says the empty unused sidewalks
Have you been to Montreal (the city this footage is taken from)? Montreal is a blizzard with -30 Celsius, 3ft of snow and 2in thick of ice everywhere for 3 to 6 months a year. In that context, not only are bike lanes reducing mobility, they are literal empty parking lots that you can't park in for HALF THE YEAR!!!
@@Not.a.bird.Personpeople in e.g. Finnland cycle the whole year not bothered by snow or ice because they have good cycling infrastucture
@@serenityf.6234 Europe is not Canada. Stop trying to make it so. Much of Europe is not even remotely comparable to Canada in any way both in economic terms and in geographic terms. The vast majority of Canada's population lives within a small radius of just a couple cities that are very far from each other. Canada is extremely sparse and is nowhere near the average density of even the least dense countries of Europe. ''Good cycling infrastructure'' doesn't just magically happen in a vacuum where you just have to break enough car infrastructure for it to work. An empty unusable biking lane is not ''good cycling infrastructure''.
@@Not.a.bird.Person I don't get the argument about inter-city density...most people in Europe are not biking between cities, they are biking to work or to the cafe. A bike lane that is empty could be so for a variety of reasons...perhaps it is not cleared (not a bike lane problem but a city maintenance one), or it doesn't connect well to other areas yet (rome wasn't built in a day), or just it's a commuting lane that is very busy at specific times of years. My street has almost no car traffic on it 98% of the time...should we remove it? Of course not...Canada isn't like Europe because, 50-100 years ago some people wanted a different looking country. Some people now want their country to look different. I'm not saying owning a car should be hard or terrible, I'm saying owning a bicycle and going to work should be a safe option. It's possible, but it takes sharing of resources. Not everyone bikes, not everyone drives. Let's share.
Dutchman here, just check out “ Not Just For Bikes”, I think it’s from a Toronto guy who lived all over the world and currently resides in The Netherlands. Just fun to watch his experiences, especially for those who think they are car dependent.
I don't understand why people don't value having multiple options for getting around. To me, that enhances mobility, rather than diminishing it.
People are very narrow minded. "If it is no use to me then it is not needed at all".
They're bad with numbers.
They think "I have three lanes each way now, if that becomes 2 lanes each way then I will get there a third slower!" Not realizing that the capacity of a bike lane is a huge amount more than the capacity of a car lane, about five times as much in my experience. So those 2 car lanes that are left will actually have less cars on them and flow faster, because a lot of people will switch to bikes or walking.
Because once you've got a car, removing a parking space (on the street) takes away the convenience of a car. Many of these residents who are opposed have been parking on the street for many years. Now, with the bike lane they are losing that which makes having a car more and more of an inconvenience.
Affluent white people love driving in their hyper convenient personal cars and don't consider any other forms of transportation to be valid. That's it. That's the whole reason.
It's the same reason you get road rage and festering frustration for parking. Acclimation to the silver spoon.
@@bengt_axle So what you are saying is that they have been reducing people's mobility by storing their personal vehicle on the public street for years or decades for free and are now complaining about that being taken away?
I don't always have the money to fill up my gas tank... ROADS ARE CLASSIST!!!😡😡😡
Good thing we collectively decided that poor people are evil. Begone foul demon!
“we want consultation” is code for them saying that we wanted to say no for change and safety.
they say they want consultation while presenting the best arguments for why they should never ever be consulted on anything! 🤣
In cities, I don't know why anyone would even want to own a car. When I lived in Chicago I would either walk or use public transit.
"How are families supposed to transport their children?" They're not supposed to! Stop giving in to American thinking, kids are supposed to be able to get places themselves without mom playing taxi and feeling like a superhero for all the things she does for her kids.
Cars are ageist because babies can't drive 😂
More relevantly, many seniors can't (or at least shouldn't) drive either
More seriously there are tons of disabilities that make you unable to drive
To be fair babies can’t do most things
More pertinently, elementary and middle school aged kids can’t drive either.
It’s crazy that you have to be nearly 2 decades old before you’re allowed to leave your neighborhood. Could unironically make an argument or two
I have no sympathy for their plight
Asking "do you drive a car" in north America is like asking do you breath air or drink water.
Back in the 70s I used to ride my bike to school. Back then of course there was no such thing as a "bike lane" were I lived here in Australia. You weren't allowed to ride on the footpath because you might knock someone down. So you had to ride between the parked cars and the moving vehicles. Watch out for car doors being flung open. Then if you wanted to turn right, (we drive on the left), you had to cross in front of traffic and turn at the intersection while crossing back to the outside. Boy, did that upset drivers who had to slow down for 10 seconds. It was like the end of the world. I was yelled out numerous times like everyone else on a bike for "riding in traffic"; where I was supposed to be; some drivers in such a rush would then decide you needed to be lectured. Many years later as a driver, I remember all that and always let bike riders have the right of way, and give them plenty of space. Bike lanes eventually appeared here, just not many and of course drivers complain about them "taking up space".
Also, the introduction of mobile phones. How many still look at their phone for texts etc, though I have seen casual cyclists look too. To survive is to have instincts and that alone will keep you alive, pity those who don't qualify. I used to ride to work, on every ride respect is given to cars because they will hurt when collided with. Now that I drive because of location change, still respect is given to cars, especially trucks.
"I wasn't consulted" they really expect city officials to go and knock door to door and consult everyone. Meanwhile I bet they didn't bother to go to any of the city run meetings.
Calgary is getting multiple bike lanes. I've had a month to give as much feedback as I please on the ones going in my neighborhood via in person events, and an online portal where I could mark concerns on a map, and leave public comments. The comments were overwhelmingly positive, also people could up vote or downvote comments. Pro comments were more numerous than against, and they got far more upvotes.
Later in the fall, they'll reveal the design, and I'll get to leave feedback again.
I bet when they start building it, there will be people screeching that "they weren't consulted" even though they would have had plenty of time and opportunities to do so
I wonder if there's posters/flyers up in the neighbourhood that ironically motorists don't notice whilst driving around, but people outside of cars do.
Absolutely right on the part where they expect someone to notify them specifically when anything specifically relevant to them is happening. I was just at a community meeting for a new development near me. Like clockwork, people said the BS about how 11 new cars will cause a parking and traffic catastrophe. They felt like it was some conspiracy that they weren’t notified. However I’m subscribed to all the development plan updates via email and I heard about the meeting last month.
@@JWK35 yep multiple posters, and even a portable billboard got put up for the ones in my neighborhood. And I saw the portable billboard in one of the other neighborhoods getting bike lanes
Reminds me of the new-ish LRT bridge in Edmonon. They did the same thing, gave people plenty of time to decide on what to do, gave the people plenty of time to look at the approved design and voice any concern, etc. The moment they announced they were going through with the plan that the community approved of, basement dwellers popped up in droves, screaming that there was no consultation.
You don't really want to vote on every single little thing either. CA does this and voters just tune out because it's overwhelming. You can't expect regular people to be an expert on everything out there. It's better to vote for more general directions or on implemented results than be forced to read "legal-ese" each time you vote for something on the ballot.
interesting how they talk about safety of children but their only practical arguments concern their selfish desire to drive faster. They desperately wanna drive their child killing machines through the neighbourhood as fast as possible
I think this is what they actually mean when they keep saying “dangerous.” They mean that because of the new design, they have to drive more attentively and make some changes to their routine, and this makes them nervous. Since the redesign “caused” their anxiety, it must mean that the design is dangerous. It’s emotional reasoning.
@@pbriffy it's scary scary as the lady in the video said
Fun fact, bigger cars liek SUVs, Trucks, etc. are more likely to kill children than smaller cars.
As I watched this, I repeatedly found myself getting angry to hear the same insanity about bikes that I had to listen to in my 30 years of living in Toronto. But I kept calming down by reminding myself that this is why I now live in the Netherlands.
It still isn’t clear to me how driving in Canada causes an inability to reason or think…
There must be something in the water over there. They should research that and remove the compound that causes such irrationality.
Oh, wait: it's a cultural problem. Which means there's no quick and easy cure! 🥶
Just FYI people in the USA are just as psychotic about bikes.
In the Netherlands we would have a public uproar if a municipality would suggest to remove a bike lane. 😂
Now, yes... but we in North America are like the Netherlands in the 70s. We have a lot of catching up to do.
@@EricaGamet In the 70s in the Netherlands we had mostly public uproar to build bike lanes and reduce car traffic, which is why the country is how it is today. The focus on cycling didn't come from the top down. There were lots of protests against car traffic mainly because people were fed up with increasing accidents.
Berlin recently stalled all bike lanes!!!
@@jbird4478 Yes, I am well aware of that... that's why I said we are like Netherlands in the 70s. 🙄 We are at the point now where you were in the 70s.
@@EricaGametso in around 50 years you should be good?
It's natural to be annoyed about new inconveniences in your daily life, but it's stunning how incredibly mad people like this get over them. I mean, seriously? An injunction on all bike paths in Montreal, attempting to choke the progress of thousands of peoples' transportation, just because parking is a bit less convenient now?
When you are use to privilege equality seems like oppression.
It seems that if so many people really lose parking spots then suppliers of multi floor parking garages will step in to meet the demand.
But if parking is a bit less convenient, then that would choke the progress of thousands _more_ people's transportation.
@@DavidLeeKersey "Equality" is allowing bikes and cars to use the same travel lanes. "Privilege" would be bikes getting their own, exclusive lanes.
@@laughinggiraffe9176 "suppliers of multi floor parking garages will step in to meet the demand."
To be fair, that might not be allowed by zoning. Certainly wouldn't be in the US.
I understand some of their complaints, but they didn't even use the parking. That's like me saying I don't want to throw away this box of usb cables I never use cause one day I might use it. It's silly. I had a bike path blocked like this for years, now it's here and tons of people ride it up and down. Another thing is , requiring license and registration for bikes seem silly too. unless you're a senior citizen , you can probably just brush off a bike hit and keep walking, not so much a hit by a car. Pretty much any hit with a car will provide injury. People don't know physics tho, they don't think in terms of science, they only think in terms of their conveniences.
It's funny watching these smooth brained seniors talk about how it's "ageist" & "ableist" to have these bike lanes lmao I was hit by a senior who was driving reckless and hit me going full speed (50km) no brakes now I don't have a car (I paid $18k for it and got $3k from the accident) I can never work ever again I used to be a mechanic and I have to rely on a bicycle to do my groceries and go to my dr appointments solely because of people like this and also the lady saying "because of the bike lanes on the way here I felt lost and no clue where I was going" please give your license up and sell your car and buy a nice ebike before you kill or ruin someone's life like the geezer that ruined mine......
When it comes to ageism and biking: My grandmother, when she had to give up driving due to serious health issues, switched to a tricycle (she typically rode on the sidewalk, nobody stopped her even though that's technically not legal where this was happening), and was able to get about town that way for many years until she couldn't do that anymore.
Also, for the lady concerned about school drop-off: How about instead of dropping your kid off every day, you give the kid a bike, the kid rides down the nice safe bike lane and gets themselves to school?
"Oh never - my child's precious feet will never touch land!!"😂
Or get a bike yourself, improve your health and ride to school with them, or get a cargo bike, keep dropping them off at school, do your groceries and other errands without contributing to climate change, improve your health and longevity so that you can have more quality time with your kids as they grow up?
Also the argument that the elderly or unfit who can't walk or cycle are too numerous so we can't give up car space is kinda self-fulfilling. Making light exercise attractive does wonders for public health and delaying the deterioration with age. And every bicycle is one less car on the road to make space for who does really need it.
Moreover I would be waaaaay more fine if my kids, whether by foot or by bike, didn't have to take the risk to be hit by 3tons SUV drove by a frustrated man that know he will have to go in a traffic jam and thus be late at work. And of course, besides this possibility, it is maybe a little bit better if they don't have to inhale toxic fumes produces by those cars and catch asthma at the very best
I heard people complaining that it was not safe for kids to ride to school therefore they must be driven, right beside other comments claiming that no bike lane was necessary because the roads were safe as-is.
It's anything that gets me what I want.
I am Dutch and born with a muscle illness. Let me just say that bike lanes are the opposite of ageist and ableist. Chances are that, if you are too old or disabled to ride a bike, you won't be able to drive a car either. You are probably driving around in a mobility scooter or electric wheelchair, which make bike lanes very convenient and safe.
I'm a cyclist and I propose that bike license plates become mandatory!!!!!
I am in Australia, which is not a very bike friendly country. However, as a cyclist, I constantly come across friendly people who are travelling as I am. And as I see the majority of the population rushing around in their motorized tin boxes, I don't see a friendly wave anywhere.
I'm a fellow aussie who's a bit of a "tinbox" enthusiast (Restoring a Holden Ute as a project as we speak) and to be honest? The more we spend on cycling infrastructure and better public transit, the better our roads will be for people who actually need to, and who actually care about driving.
@@rtmpgt Agree 100%.
The woman complaining about her drive going from 0.7kms to 2kms is half the issue.
People are so conditioned to drive for every trip that she will drive 700 metres before ever considering, cycling or walking.
The longest walk for most of these people is to the fridge
Yeah, even considering using your car for such distances is something I don’t understand. If you live so close to the shops you can do groceries every day or every other day, which can easily fit in a backpack or panniers. 700m is a nice walk, though I might choose to grab my bike for that.
Was that even their entire drive, or just the portion within the neighbourhood?
It's extremely disingenuous to rant about doubling driving distance, when it's a portion of typically much longer trips.
@geoff5623 from her own chicken lips, her drive was 0.7kms.
I didn't make up the 700m number. If that lady wants to engage in hyperbole to sensationalise her claim, that's on her. No me.
@@Aussie_stu not criticizing you - I'm also critical of her statement.
Even if that 2km total distance drive is one she does regularly, I'm sure it's not her most frequent trip, so she's being very selective in picking a trip that doubles to be sensational when (1) it's not actually that far, and the extra distance is a small amount of emissions over just getting the car started twice (2) she must have more trips where the extra distance is a negligible amount (3) if that bike lane encourages just one person the cycle that same distance instead of driving for each time she would make that trip, it's a net benefit
Seriously! 700m is a
Driver’s concerns over safety are pretty hard to take seriously.
I’ve never seen a bike with seat belts, safety glass, collision detection, front and curtain airbags. Seems bikers don’t give two flying squirts about safety by this metric. Most of the rare ones I see where I live don’t have proper reflectors and aren’t wearing helmets either. The scooter folks are even worse. I’ve driven a stranger to the ER before who had a serious wound from falling off a rental scooter.
@@CountJeffula Don't you think those safety features are necessary on a vehicle that weight 2 metric tons and not useful on a vehicle that weight less than 10 kg and move at a speed of 20 kmh usually?
@@thepedrothethethe6151 Depends. I’d rather be in a car with those safety features crashing into a brick wall at 30 miles per hour than a bike. You can go on the bike and we can see who’s hurt more. How is the weight relevant when it’s the deceleration forces that cause the most issues?
@@CountJeffula bro didn't care think the risk of children getting run over by car or even the property damage caused by a car got sent flying to a building
@@ero6056 parents should watch their children. What nonsense is this? And you’re suggesting a car can damage a building, so ban them? A plane, train, and boat can do a hell of a lot more damage, so we should ban all them too.
Anyway be back next week for our newest protest, “Bring Back Asbestos!” “We Need More Lead!” “Trees Cause Cancer!”
Correct! NO children drive, but children CAN ride bicycles. And the elderly can ride bicycles, too. The elderly can prolong their strength and agility by biking.
And there are many older people no longer able to drive, and people of all ages never able to. Then there are all those killed, made sick, impoverished and whose quality of life has been significantly diminished by a car-dependent society.
Everyone pays tax that go to infrastructure, so everyone has the right to use the road.
I am for registration, then riders will behave better but some motorists still behave like race car drivers.
In the Netherlands all the bike infrastructure is paid for by car drivers. If you own a car, you pay "road tax" which is used for roads, bike paths, and pedestrian infrastructure. The reasoning behind this is that cycling infrastructure is only needed because cars make it unsafe otherwise. Without cars, we wouldn't need any separate infrastructure.
Different infrastructure has different purposes, and restricting cars to roads and bikes to bike/multipurpose paths makes things safer for everyone. You wouldn't want cars driving on sidewalks just because "my tax dollars pay for it".
The closest thing you'll get to a conspiracy was the way people lost their mobility when they were all but forced to own and drive a car. I get that most people would rather drive than walk/bike or use mass transit. But getting rid of every form of transportation other than driving your own car isn't exactly pro-mobility.
"I get that most people would rather drive than walk"
I really don't think that's the case. Who would chose a 5 minute drive over a 10 minute walk? I think most people would just walk, given there wasn't a reason not to (bad weather, lots of stuff to carry).
I think it's more that driving tends to be the best option not only long-range but also short-range. The latter being an infrastructure issue.
Who are your friends? Pretty much everyone where I live would choose the drive. The walk you could get mugged/shot/run over/sweaty/experience annoying panhandlers/and more. Driving you get climate control, good music, navigation, cup holders, heated/AC seats. Walking you get none of that.
It's impossible to know if there's an actual conspiracy or not, but I don't think that personally matters. I like to think about it like this; what kind of environment could shift the overton window enough to allow enough support in the future for certain policies that have very little public support today?
To steelman the restricted mobility argument, the first thing that I could think of is the idea that cars could be far more heavily restricted in the future, to the point that choosing to drive to a different city was far more difficult and/or expensive: a world with increased local mobility, but decreased (or less private) long distance mobility. That's the kind of thing I think they're talking about.
Now could a single bike lane shift the overton window enough to allow for that to get enough public support? Of course not. But I do think bike infrastructure in general contributes a fair bit to that potential. I think if we got to the point of local transportation infrastructure being good enough for most people to not need cars, combined with public transportation being self driving electric vehicles, then public support would likely be enough to create such restrictions over a period of time in the name of environmentalism. I think some restrictions like I described already exist in some places to a minor degree.
But, even with that potential, is it worth fighting against bike lanes and other infrastructure upgrades? I don't think so. I live in a rural area so I'm biased towards driving of course, but I understand that the more people using other forms of transportation in the city, the less traffic there would be for people that need to drive in. All that stuff I described before is a fight for another time.
@@harbingerofwarx995 yes! We can all own nothing and be happy about it! Why even have physical possessions when you can use SAAS and the metaverse!
I agree with your last sentence.
The idea that bike-lanes endanger children more than a street with big metal vehicles that can go incredibly fast, is wild.
Right?! Where I live in SF Bay Area California, which has areas of bike friendly pathways but needs much more, a 7 year old who was on a bicycle with her Dad was killed one Saturday morning when a driver swerved the car into the (non-protected) bike lane and hit the bicycle knocking the child off the bike and killing that child. Had there been a protected bike lane, the child would still be alive today and that driver wouldn't be hit with criminal charges (manslaughter) and possible guilt and anguish for killing a young girl.
I thought Cirque de Soleil had the highest concentration of clowns in MTL. Guess I was mistaken.
I've infiltrated their Facebook page by feigning opposition to the bike path, and oh boy, is it a wild little community.
Highlights of the delusions:
-One lady complained that local children had to dangerously cross "two lanes of bike paths and one lane of cars." No mention, of course, of the relative danger of a child crossing two lanes of opposite car traffic!
-Someone posted a video of that viral story of the road cyclist illegally passing a schoolbus and hitting a little girl crossing the street, as evidence foe the "reckless disregard these cyclists have for our children" No mention of course, that the happy ending to this story was that the little girl was uninjured, and she was much better off than had she had been in a car collision.
-When a Montreal group organized a bike ride through the bike path, they insisted this was an effort by the "bike agenda" to "make it look like the bike path is widely used."
The so-called "Terrebonne Neighborhood Association" is a community of conspiratorially minded and self reinforcing Nimbys. They are so out of touch that they think the city is imposing this on them, and I haven't seen a single acknowledgement of the positives of having a cycling path.😅
Instead of Terrebonne they better call it Terrible. When you say it fast, it sounds the same 😂
Flurfdesign talked about a bus having to block cars cause drivers wouldn't let kids cross the street to get to school.
At the risk of sounding 'ageist,' all those people in the meeting where old boomers. It's a comfort zone for them and it's rather narcissistic of them to assume that they are the only ones who benefit, or otherwise, from any sort of infrastructure. Times are changing - and they need to learn to change with it.
"Ageist and ableist" wow. I am a 65 year old who has had MS for 31 years, and I use bike paths daily. So gtfoh with that nonsense!