A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
First pro car interviewee: "I can't unload my shopping directly in front of my house, therefore I'm being harassed"
What?! Bringing harassment into the mix -> immediate dismissal of opinion.
Third interviewee: my daughter had a collision with a cyclist.
So you want her to have a collision with a car instead?
So let me get this straight:
The center right party (Ensemble montréal) made the decision to remove the bike lanes following a proposal from the center left party (Projet montréal) in 2021…
I don't think who they voted for even mattered in this case
The previous Mayor of Montreal, who ran for Projet Montréal campaigned partly on expanding bike lanes and followed through on several major bike lane projects.
I don't know the history of this specific bike lane, but I know it's a small street that normally doesn't get a ton of traffic. It's a perfect street to host a bike lane, but it's a somewhat upper-class neighborhood and the residents want their street parking, and bikes are for the poor.
That's what seems strange as well. I remember seeing the mayor getting praised for the new bike lanes too. Kinda made me wonder if Ensemble Montréal was lying for a second, but if they were, it would've been easily disproven.
This ended up longer than I expected, so I've tried to use spoiler tags to make it less of a wall of text.
I appreciate City News showed three people voicing why they supported removal of this painted bike lane and the reinstatement of street parking. It succinctly exemplifies how these individuals think.
The first individual dislikes the inability to easily unload their car into their home from the curb.
While I don't know how far away from home the cars need to be parked, walking a few minutes shouldn't be the reason there is still street parking on the other side of the road so I'm guessing not far.
There is also mention of the buses driving on the sidewalk because of the bike lane? I've watched it half a dozen times now and with the way they have to chop up these interviews it's difficult to ascertain what is meant by this comment.
The second person echoed the first.
Comments on the density of the area not having on property parking, but perhaps that should have been a consideration when choosing what street to live on? I'll write something more about this at the end.
The third is where this segment gets interesting. The interviewee’s daughter was clipped by a cyclist while walking off a school bus.
This is understandably upsetting. No one wants that to happen. However, the actions of this one cyclist are being extrapolated to every cyclist.
This bothers me on the face of it, as well because I'm certain this particular individual would be displeased at being stereotyped alongside a bad apple of a description matching their own, despite doing the very same with the cyclist.
The first and second people are talking about putting their own convenience above others, where the third is allowing an anecdotal experience to give way to reason. In either case, this is selfishness.
Along with this change only being seasonal, it's also a short stretch that accommodates maybe a few dozen parking spaces at the expense and endangerment of the hundreds that ride through there daily.
It may be worth pointing out that only about half of eligible voters in this burrow cast a ballot in the recent municipal election. Hopefully next time, people will take it more seriously.
Regarding street parking for residents.
In a Crown For The Day situation, I would personally be in favour of obliterating on street parking in dense locations like this altogether.
Ideally, this would be implemented with the city buying the homes of people that get grumpy about this change and allowing them to move somewhere with parking, then selling the homes to new owners that understand there isn't public parking in the area anymore.
Of course this would also mean ensuring ten minutes frequency for transit (I like trams), among some other details, but I'm sure I'll think of every contingency and outlying possibility should the Crown ever come knocking.
Sorry this was so long, I'm sure no one will read it all haha.
The through line in this kind of thing is always people being selfish and reasoning poorly.
It's like when someone says "I need to own a car! What if I need to move furniture??" It's just emotional sludge that doesn't stand up to reason with fair axioms.
Vive les pistes cyclables!