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Comment by tharmas | Hacker News Reader

In Canada's climate people are going to get out of their cars and walk and bicycle? In the majority of Canada Winter lasts for 6 months.

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Lots of Canadians - not to mention Scandanavians and New Englanders and mid-westerners, all of whom have comparably cold and bitter winters to what most of Canada has - walk and bike, even in winter.

But, beyond that, they can take buses and trains and subways and streetcars. Like most people do in Montreal and Toronto already.

Beyond beyond that, this doesn't mean all roads in Canadian cities are going to be destroyed. As the article says, the government will still help pay for maintenance. And cities and provinces - who are the ones who are actually responsible for the vast majority of the roads in the country - can still do whatever they like. It's just that the federal government isn't going to help pay for it.

The dislike of public transit emerges from other issues. Canada has its own oligarchy; if they had to use public transit, it wouldn't be a problem. Instead, private planes and private airports for them, traffic jams at YUL and YYC for us.

In Calgary, we have issues with safety and drug use on transit, while our mayor and city council commute by car. Moreover, while any action on transit safety gets delayed, the police get turned on the impoverished who make the mistake of being in-or-near city hall.

These issues are all connected, and the safety issue / reputational issues need to be tackled if we want people to appreciate public tarnsit.

Take public transit? How many cities in Canada have that? Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, a couple of others with adequate Public Transit. There's plenty of cities in Canada that have VERY LIMITED public transit.

And Canada's Winter climate throughout most of the country is actually a lot colder than the populated parts of Scandinavia. And I'm not talking about the far north in Canada either. Edmonton is far far colder than the populated parts of Scandinavia.

No idea why this is getting flagged, I guess some people don't realize that Canada has real winters. You have to be masochistic to suicidal to rely on cycling between December and March, sometimes longer than that depending on the weather that year. I would love to see eco-fascists practice what they preach; let's see Guilbeault bike to work all winter in a location without adequate public transit, and we will see what happens when he gets his first flat in the cold and dark.

such is life for a great deal of people. Now forgive me if I am wrong, but perhaps you are a littttle bit too sheltered from real life? :)

Because there's a ton of methods of transportation that aren't car or bike? You seem to have forgotten public transportation exists.

Are you canadian? Cause I am, and I support this.

I lived in a rural area of Canada as recently as last year, and believe me I tried to use public transit. Once again, if you support it, try it yourself. Not in the middle of whatever city you inhabit. Go out into the sticks, spend a winter walking half an hour to the bus stop and working around the inconsistent schedules and delays, and we'll see how you feel about it. I bet you'd give up real fast after missing the last bus for the first time and having to find a taxi willing to get you all the way back home.

You need at least ONE reliable way to get around year-long, so you can't tell people that they will have to work around inadequate road infrastructure by biking around. Listing it as an alternative to driving in Canada is therefore a false equivalence. Work on public transit that serves people adequately and we can talk about disincentivizing people from driving, but Canada likes to do things backwards recently, which is why I no longer live there.

It's easy to talk down to people when you don't have to contend with their issues. But I don't blame you for doing so. I do blame politicians since it's their job not to.

By the way, I didn't say that I don't support better infrastructure for alternative modes of transportation. But you do it by investing there (and preferably not taking twenty years to complete every project with several extensions and exceeding the budget by a multiple), not with eco-fascist methods of threatening and withholding needed resources.

lots of people do stuff like that, and i live in WINNIPEG

There's tons of people that bike in the winter. Montreal has a special winter bike share with studded tires even.

But it's beside the point because there exists obvious alternatives to cycling in the winter, which is to use public transportation.

Get serious. In the majority of the country public transporation is absolutely abysmal.

Hence why the Federal government is interested in investing in public transportation.

It is getting flagged because transit is a thing, investment in transit is the most glaringly obvious way to reduce our reliance on roads in moderately-and-up populated areas, and the author ignores that.

In less-populated areas, biking/walking is not feasible anyway, the distances are too large regardless of weather (see any documentary of the Amish lifestyle, many have to rely on out-of-community drivers for some errands because distances to store, doctor, etc. are too far for a horse and buggy).

Public transit is also not a legitimate option in "less-populated areas" in my experience, see my cousin comment. But my interpretation is that Guilbeault, kind of like Trudeau, is a weird ideologue who sometimes spouts stupid unrealistic things, but probably isn't stupid enough to actually go through with it once he gets a reality check. I see that he walked back on the original statement somewhat.

With that being said I have no confidence in Canada's ability to develop a solid public transit network with people like that at the helm. Every project that I've seen recently has taken forever, ran well over budget, and barely covered any ground. If you're working from the idea of removing cars backwards instead of having a vision for a public transit system that is actually pleasant to use and would encourage people to transition organically, of course it's going to be a mess.

Is transit a thing in the Niagara Region? Niagara Falls, St. Catherines, Welland, Fort Erie? Only major cities in this country have adequate transit. How many cities north of Toronto have adequate Transit?

You can walk to school year round in many parts of Canada. There is no bad weather, just inappropriately dressed people.

You don't really. Being active outside is fine, and the bigger challenge is getting to hot, rather than too cold.

The big things is clearing snow off of the paths. Canadians will spend all day in -30C out skiing. Half an hour on a bike is nothing

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