We need to aggressively transition away from fossil fuel dependence. We need transit, bike and e-bike lanes, infill densification with non-market housin. The whole paradigm of fossil fuel based capitalism is just making us miserable.
-20c, Winnipeg, wind chill of -30c, a foot of fresh snow and you wanna be on a bicycle? Being OUTSIDE in winter is what’s making us miserable, not my warm car.
In addition to convenient transit options, yes, I DO want the choice to bike comfortably in the winter. If Northern European countries with similar winter conditions can do it easily and comfortably, then so can we (same 15-minute video at both links): Youtube | Invidious
The only reason we don’t do this ourselves is because we’re so influenced by US car culture.Well that may be why you dont bike in winter. I dont bike in winter because a) the weather is brutal, often going to -20 and worse with windchill, b) You cant take anyone with you (comfortably), c) carrying anything heavy or large is a pain (like tools, groceries, refillable water bottles, d) we often have a foot of snow overnight and Id rather drive out with my SUV than shovel for an hour just to get to the road, e) putting kids on a bike isn’t very safe with distracted drivers all over. Bikes are sometimes a solution for singles, they suck for families. And yes you can put kids on them but its not wise nor safe in this country.
I understand if you don’t have time to do it now, but don’t reply as if you did watch the video when you obviously haven’t. One of the first topics the video addresses is weather. (Also, lol at -20/-30, it can get colder than even that in Winnipeg and there are still die-hards who ride their bikes in it despite the limited supporting infrastructure.) Anyway, nobody is telling you to give up your car. But it’s selfish and unreasonable to deny everyone else affordable, healthy, and enjoyable commutes and joyrides because you only want to use one type of transportation yourself. If you want to limit yourself to one transportation method, that’s your own prerogative, but you’d find there’d be less traffic on the road and less maintenance costs to the city if more varied options were available to everyone else.
Im actually an incumbent bike rider. But never in my town (Id get run over even with a flag).
dude… talk to us when you tie up your man bun and actually ride a bike in -20C.
I rode my bike in -20 to -30 to work, 13km. It is possible, but not realistic for most people. Snow-clearing infrastructure (this was Winnipeg) is just not made to make it safe for normal bikes. I needed studded tires.
Being optimistic about possibilities is nice, but it won’t help a 53-year old lady with help issues get to work.
I want to get away from ICE cars as much as the next person, but let’s temper our enthusiasm with reality, here, come on.
Yes, temperature isn’t really the issue for a healthy person. 4:20-6:00 is the time frame of the video I posted above where you can see the section about how snow clearing is handled in Oulu, Finland. (7:38 has about 20 seconds addressing that the cost is still a fraction of what having wider roads costs.) Most there don’t even use studded tires.
Beyond that, cars, buses, and rail lines won’t suddenly disappear from people gaining the freedom to comfortably ride their bikes. People with health issues (which is what I assume you mean by “help issues”) and people who don’t like cycling both have the option of driving or public transit and are therefore irrelevant to this conversation (though they would benefit along with everyone else from reduced traffic/road maintenance from slightly narrower streets and less drivers on the road).
Incidentally I straight up hate jogging myself, but you won’t find me telling those who do enjoy it that they should go without properly cleared sidewalks (same equipment needed to clear paths for bikes, incidentally) just because I’m in the majority of people who either can’t or don’t want to jog. I’ve also complained about big box storefronts that force those using wheelchairs and mobility devices to risk their lives on the road and/or mount/dismount full curbs if they have the gall to approach from the sidewalk instead of the parking lot.
but you won’t find me telling those who do enjoy it
I hope you didn’t interpret my comment as “down with winter cycling”, that isn’t what I’m getting at. I personally would love to cycle everywhere all year (though not as much now that I live in the mountains!).
Your own video says it all: north america suffers from a car obsession. It’s misguided and dumb, but it exists nevertheless.
We need transit, bike and e-bike lanes, infill densification
The sentence opens with transit.
Have you ridden Winnipeg transit? No one who can afford a car prefers sitting in a dirty bus one row away from a guy nodding off from his near overdose. There’s a reason people overwhelmingly prefer the comfort, privacy and safety of their own car.
I wrote:
We need to aggressively transition away from fossil fuel dependence. We need transit
What you’re saying confirms what I am saying. Our transit systems are shit. We need better transit, and we need more transit. And we need densification (as I also wrote), so that transit is efficient and reasonable. We need ways of organizing our cities that don’t make the private car to be the most obvious and comfortable option. Transit and active transportation should be the most obvious and comfortable options.
I hear what you’re saying but you haven’t convinced me that people prefer to be in a public setting, over their own private transportation. Even if transit were clean and safe, I still want the option to drive when I want, where I want, listening to whatever I want, and picking up and dropping off whomever and whatever I want along the way. Transit will always been a poorer choice because it takes away all the freedom of driving which is why it will never be as popular.
Driving sucks, when you live near a bus stop or train station you dread having to drive.
It sounds like you just haven’t experienced living in a place with good transit.
I’m not talking just about clean and safe. I’m talking about frequent, dense, and reliable. Good transit. In Montreal we don’t even have an amazing transit system, just a decent one that covers only parts of the city, and I would never never drive to work except if I need to haul some heavy thing because who wants to deal with all that shit (traffic, parking, other drivers etc). On the regular I just hop on transit and watch youtube videos or read or whatever for 30 minutes. And that’s at a place that could use a LOT (and I mean a LOT) of improvement.
“An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.” ~Enrique Penalosa
Most of Europe and Asia would disagree with you.
Different country, different problem.
A lot of it comes down to terrible city planning and suburbia. Our cities are designed for cars, a lot of places aren’t walkable, and public transit leaves a lot to be desired.
Gas always costs the same if you just put in 20 bucks
Is that a Shaq gas math reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpKrvHs-PC8
The bad part is that Canada is taking no measures to reduce usage like some other countries are doing. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/20/oil-price-energy-watchdog-iea-emergency-measures-work-from-home-slow-down-on-the-road
A bunch of people don’t need to work from offices. That would reduce the demand by a lot, and also free the roads for those who need to drive, helping those to save on gasoline. Back to office was just a way to pleasure real state and oil billionaires.
Even more buses can reduce the demand for cars.
The the whole thing with forcing people to work at the office is pure insanity. We definitively know from the pandemic that there’s practically no difference in productivity when people work from home. It’s just pure sadism, and there’s no rational reason for it.
And yet the federal government already mandated 3 days in the office, and is now trying to get it to 4 mandatory days in the office for all employees.
It’s all due to pressure from businesses who lost out heavily when offices weren’t used, everyone from the cafe or restaurant down the street to office furniture to architects got dragged down.
Time to change with the times. We didn’t keep changing laws to support whale oil when alternatives were found. Maybe a bad example as we do change laws to support fossil fuels all the time but i think my point remains. If you aren’t selling office furniture, shift to selling home office furniture. The architects could, idk maybe design housing instead of offices. And tbh if your restaurant is only afloat because it was the convenient nearby choice, maybe it isnt that good.
I don’t think you are understanding the problem.
Work from home hurts businesses, back to office hurts people. If we hurt businesses they might leave! People don’t have that option.
Basically, that’s the main driver. All these office buildings and businesses around them start losing money when people can work from home. And since we have no imagination here, there’s no talk of repurposing them for something genuinely useful. Like imagine if the government started a program to turn them into vertical farms so cities could start producing some of their own food locally.
Betcha it’s the 1/3 who bought one of 183,000 Ford F150s sold last year.
The Article:
One-third of Canadians say their personal finances have worsened in the last month as gas prices and inflation rise amid the war in Iran, according to a new poll.
The survey conducted by Canada Pulse Insights for CityNews found 60 per cent said their financial position remained the same, while one in 10 said their situation had improved.
Those who said their financial position had worsened were those earning $50,000 or less (40 per cent) and those living in Atlantic Canada (37 per cent). East Coasters were followed closely behind by those in British Columbia at 35 per cent and Alberta at 34 per cent.
Poll respondents who said their financial position had improved were those aged 18 to 24 at 14 per cent, men at 13 per cent and those earning over $50,000 per year (11 per cent). Improvement was also noted in Quebec at 14 per cent.
Meanwhile, nearly 80 per cent of those surveyed said they would be worried about their personal or family day-to-day finances, and 34 per cent said they would likely struggle to make ends meet.
A total of 14 per cent believed they could lose their job or be laid off because of a lack of work and said they would not have the ability to purchase the products they need for themselves or their family.
Nearly one in 10 Canadians, 13 per cent, said they would likely default on making payments on loans or a mortgage, and seven per cent said they are likely to declare bankruptcy.
The survey’s release comes as gas prices were expected to jump 10 cents on Wednesday to 195.9 cents per litre, the highest since the summer of 2022.
Nearly one in 10 Canadians, 13 per cent, said they would likely default on making payments on loans or a mortgage, and seven per cent said they are likely to declare bankruptcy.
This has always been true.
Car centric country suffers when the basket they put all their eggs in increases in price.
…so crap on the plebes just trying to buy groceries and get to work?
fuk you too
Maybe the country could have built a more robust transportation network so it isn’t reliant on a resource that has had crisis after crisis for decades. Its these decisions fucking the plebes. The plebes deserve alternatives to relying on fossil fuels.
I agree - but your comment just shat on the people suffering the most
That’s not what they are saying in their comment. You’re rage baiting.
Yes, it is
The wealthy do not give a FUK about gas prices
The only people that get hurt by high gas prices are the plebes
…and these articles, pushed by yankee billionaire owned “news” are designed to try to worry and undermine Canadians belief in our wonderful country
They are not talking about poor people specifically they are talking about the country on the whole, they are talking about the system:
Car centric country suffers when the basket they put all their eggs in increases in price.
Country. They are talking about the country.
Your analysis is not wrong, but it’s a bit short sighted because it ends with the hurt at the pump. The “plebes” are being hurt by the high gas prices because our system makes them vulnerable to fossil fuel shock. Because the governments of this country have systematically built car dependent cities.
The same Canadians who bought 180,000 Ford F150s last year alone?
how could Trudeau do this? No wonder Katy doesn’t want to look at him!
still blaming the little people and their trucks, while the actual cause is the predator elite class and a war they started to make profits on fuel
Its both
what does that mean? “fuk the plebes, they shuolda built more rail” ? Gee that’s helpful
Also, the obsession w f150s being the root cause is an intentional play by the predator elite class to mis direct our anger towards ourselves. We are not the problem, even if we drive f150s, its the baby eating, child raping predator elite class
…A single private jet flight consumes a plebes life time supply of gasoline. Look it up. And these shitheads fly all over the place in them except they consume thousands of times more fuel
So get an f150, buy a trailer, go camping and enjoy life - once the elite class gets dealt with, there will be lots of fuel to go around, then we will transition to non fossil fuel based transport, and all will be well
I don’t disagree with you, but resistance starts with your pocket. And also if you could visualize the amount of CO2 from one of these machines, and seeing how much goes into the atmosphere with 1, it might change your mind.
I think society as a well needs to change – this will trickle into the elite class as well due to group think. And do to our intention of what we want to support.
We’re like giants on this earth, and we have much more impact than we like to believe. And when you do a good deed, and you see the results trickle back, its a good feeling.
100% fuck the worthless elite class – they’re not more important, if not less important than those who need and are worth higher priority.
there will be no “trickling into the elite class”
It will be 1780s France for them
Maybe? If you give them all our money, then probably not. Look at Russia.
did you hit your head?
the plebes will not be giving “all our money” away - the predator elite class will get very very very close french haircuts, and their money will be re-diistrubuted
But the ads I see all say that the Liberals are lowering my costs! They care about me! They wouldn’t lie, right?
