Road design, transportation and walkability

[Bytor]

Yet, despite everything that the Netherlands did, and despite higher tax rates for cars (when you purchase, when you buy gas), they still have more than 1 car per household.

They also use them les soften, too, at an average of 13,000km yearly compared 20k in Canada. That's because many of those car owners are taking public transit or cycling or walking for a lot of things.

I have no issue with governments spending money on transit and cycling. I think they should. But they also have to take care of roads as well, and this sometimes means building or widening certain roads because it’s needed.

Here's something ask - why do transit and cycling infrastructure projects need business cases but roads do not? Even though it is well known and document that added transit service creates big jumps in transit usage, it still has to be justified but road widenings never are?

Something you keep refusing to address though, are these two things: transit cannot be used by the majority of people.

That is just false. Transit can be used by anybody who has a bus stop within a 5 minute walk of the start and end points. Locally, that covers 85% of all residences in Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge.

Cycling is limited in Canada to about 7 or 8 months.

False. I see people cycling all winter long. Especially the last 10 years because of the constant warm spells thanks to global warming.

No acknowledgment of transit disruptions either (either the odd strike or pestilence).

They happen less often than accidents on the 401. BTW, can I use covid-19 to say that recent 401 widening from Kitchener to Cambridge was obviously not needed?

You lose points when you say things like “start tolling cars” and “make transit free” as if somehow punishing people by stealing their time, those that can’t afford to live in some sort of transit corridor, those with elderly families, or those with health issues, is an answer, because it is not. And no country has done that.

That's not a reason to no start tolling, it's a reason add better transit service along such corridors, like our iXpress network has been doing. None of those other things you mention are barriers to transit, either. There's no reason why elderly people can't use out modern, low-floor busses. I see them doing so all the time on GRT.

BTW, your anecdote about helping an elderly relative to a medical appointment via transit? I've had enough visits to New York and used the busses and metro there for a week at a time to know that I could accomplish what you describe in under and hour even if I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan. I'm also fairly certain given my experiences using transit in Atlanta, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Dublin that I could do the same in those places. How often have you use transit systems elsewhere? In those places it very easily replaces private transportation as an option.

Dan is quite right to say that you appear to assume that just because GRT isn't the best that nowhere has good transit.

Stop hating the car, and stop hating car drivers. We got to where we are, and indeed, and developed nation has, by a combination of great transportation infrastructure, including private vehicles.

Then please tell the car drivers to stop hating transit. There's far more of them, and as a greater percentage of all car drivers, too, that want no increases in public transit service or even to get rid of it entirely, than whatever anti-car type you seem to think Dan is.