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I lived car free for couple years, until had a first kid. Carrying child car seat with you gets old very quickly. And, in winter time, biking is not only unpleasant but dangerous (or rather more dangerous than in summer). Even if it's only for 3000km a year, our lives, kids lives (and their activities) and business we bring would be negatively affected if we had no car.

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It's fundamentally an infrastructure problem. Not just bikes has a good video on finnish biking https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU, and the difference is bike paths in the us/Canada usually get treated as a leisure, rather than an essential service.

Man, the way bike paths, and even sidewalks, get treated in Canada is so frustrating. The city's instructions on shoveling your stretch sidewalk tell you that you must not shovel it I to the road... and then the city snowploughs come by and push a load of snow onto the sidewalk that you've already shovelled.

There were places this winter where the sidewalk was impassable due to several feet deep on compacted "snow boulders" from ploughs. I get that you need to allow car access, but not at the expense of pedestrians being able to walk anywhere.

The mere fact that the sidewalk isn't public property maintained by public works says a lot about the transport priorities.

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