We designed Canada's cities for cars, not people – and the people are dying | Hacker News Reader

We designed Canada's cities for cars, not people – and the people are dying

theguardian.com

40 pointsanonymfus34 comments

Worth noting the author, Jennifer Keesmaat, has announced she's running for mayor since this was published.

She's got a hell of a lot of work ahead of her if she's going to win.

Keesmaat won't win over the right-wing voters- not with articles like "cars are not the greatest thing ever". Many on the left may like Keesmaat, but as a center-left voter, I'd take another four years of Tory over a big unknown with wild promises.

I want her to win me over, I do. But she's got only a few weeks left to do it.

Agree on a lot of work to do, but Keesmaat is far from a big unknown with wild promises. She was the chief city planner for 5 years. Her stance on the issues have been well articulated for years. She has significantly more experience running the city than any candidate in years, including current mayor Tory.

She would also like to commit to building 100k affordable homes.

I've been following her on Twitter for a while because she tweets interesting things about city design, but I find this implausible. I did ask for specific how to info to make that happen. She seems to be out campaigning or something. I'm still semi hoping that she will actually reply to me at some point because I would like useful info to apply to my small American town. But I'm not holding my breath here. I will be quite surprised if I get any reply at all from anyone at all. I think most people don't really know how to foster more affordable housing.

I don't think her plan for Toronto would apply to a small town. A detached home anywhere near the core starts at about $1.3M, so "affordable" housing is relative. Adding 100k units will make the entire market more affordable, the challenge is where to put them. As the former chief planner, she's highly qualified to tackle this; she has been pushing plans for adding density in smart ways for years.

I hope you are right that she's highly qualified. I've certainly enjoyed some of her tweets on city design type stuff.

I sometimes talk to professional planners. One recently said to me that affordable housing was a tough nut to crack. This part of where I get the idea that most people have no idea how to solve it.

As I have the time and energy, I'm trying to do my own research. I still hope to find viable answers.

Affordable housing is easy, increase the amount of available housing to allow for an increase in supply to drive down demand. If you do not increase available housing because of NIMBYISM, landlords wanting to keep supply limited, ridiculous rules for supply creation (San Francisco's rules and regulations for permit application are a great example), historic districts (forcing creators to adhere to maintain old and outdated buildings that require significant investment to meet codes), and politicians who would like to avoid having to figure out a new voter base, then you will never see houses that make financial sense to maintain.

As a thought experiment, how many more people could live in San Francisco city limits if you added three stories to the current limit (which is three I believe). You double the available supply, reduce / address demand and increase the opportunity for transit usage. However, if you proposed this idea, you do not have to worry about re election.

The politicians will say it is difficult, then use public funds to add 1,000 affordable homes, which is a drop in the bucket to addressing the supply issue. Do note, that when the affordable housing allotted to the skyscraper in New York City, the affordable housing facilities were given out by the city and conveniently, if I recall, a city counselor's relative got one of the homes.

The article asserts that lowering the speed limit dramatically reduces deaths, and provides a link, and also suggests lowering speed limits as a safety measure. However, the link shows that lower collision speed dramatically reduces death, not lower speed limits. Mostly, I have seen that drivers don't tend to obey artificially low speed limits, for example, https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a14463672/how-lower...

The source might not have used the best link, but there are studies to support that claim. Vision Zero in NYC has been studied extensively and has had a huge proven impact.

I wouldn't say a opinion piece from Road and Track would be a better source, especially considering it's just quoting untested theories on the cause of a single city's issue.

The Martin Parker study on the effects of raising and lowering speed limits on actual traffic speeds should be the one that's cited.

Oh, the people who implemented Vision Zero replied to the cited article here https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a14500765/new-york-...

They call the cited article "dangerous if believed by your driving readership". They provide several points of evidence (full studies available to those interested).

This is a fundamental problem that a lot of people don't understand. In order to lower travel speed, the road itself needs to be designed with a lower speed in mind. Just posting a 40 km/h speed limit in a road with a design speed of 80 km/h won't result in lower traffic speeds without constant enforcement.

We could just ban vehicles and vehicle deaths would go to zero. People need/want to go to another position on the globe at faster than walking speed. Maybe the US was/is flavoring people in cars a bit over people not in cars, but the problem is complicated. Lowering speed is easyish but that is not exactly what most people want.

Yes. In my view, the governments are simply unwilling to devise _actually_ meaningful way to remove bad actors from the roads (bad drivers, i.e. drivers that are reckless, drive too close to cars in front of them, use mobile phone too much, do dangerous maneuvers, etc.) , so they claim "speed kills". Which is like saying "life kills".

There are a myriad reasons why people have accidents, and "speed" is not one of those reasons. Driving faster than one's skill, and car capability, on a given type of road surface, in given air visibility conditions, with given traffic, pedestrians and other people around, buildings/architecture blocking vision, and other factors, not to mention the whole huge range of actual distrations for the drivers such as ads, using mobile phone, talking with passengers, being tired, etc. .. those things actually cause accidents (and near accidents). Speed in general is almost never the issue. High speed is also almost never the key issue. Where one driver has an accident at 60kph due to being distracted / ignoring safe distance (relative to all the conditions above), etc., another can safely and confidently drive 100kph.

And every driver thinks they're better than average, therefore speed limits are put in place.

I've had more near misses with cyclists than with cars in Toronto. While I'm a huge fan of tolling the QEW to encourage more transit - Toronto roads are already pretty hostile to vehicles. Driving downtown is a high stress activity, and I don't see how increasing that even more will lead to fewer road deaths.

Increases in GO service are having an impact, we need to double down there and add congestion tolls to make it even more attractive.

This is the attitude discussed in the article. Driver's feel ownership of the road and unfairly blame cyclists and pedestrians for conflicts. This needs to change. Several studies have shown that drivers are at fault in the majority of car/bike collisions.

It's concerning that you've had more near misses with cyclists than cars; those easily turn into deaths. Getting cars to slow down and and share the road on dense urban streets isn't being hostile to cars, it's trying to stop avoidable deaths though good design.

What attitude? No one has a perfect 360 view all the time while driving. If you are on bike you are part of the traffic, take care accordingly

As someone who lives in Toronto, there are some very aggressive cyclists here who do not follow the rules. They run through red lights and stop signs without stopping, weave in and out of traffic, try to bike by cars on the shoulder and freak out on drivers if they happen to have not left enough room for a cyclist to zip past. Not all cyclists in Toronto are like this of course, but I've seen a lot of cyclists who just do whatever they want on the road and get upset when the cars can't anticipate their actions.

With all that said I think it would be a good idea to lower speed limits and install some speeding cameras. I feel there has been an uptick in the number of cyclists on the streets in the past few years and we should keep them safe. Police should also be ticketing the unsafe cyclists as it is clear that they really have no interest in sharing the road with cars. Perhaps police are already ticketing these people at a good rate, but if they are, I've never heard about it. I feel these aggressive cyclists are probably the main contributers to the anti-cyclist sentiment you see among many drivers in Toronto. Showing cyclists and drivers that we aren't going to tolerate that level of irresponsibility would probably help shift public opinion on cyclists in Toronto.

As someone who lives in Toronto, there are some very aggressive drivers here who do not follow the rules. 4 days ago I was clipped by a driver that ran a red light and drove straight into the bike lane without stopping or looking. He then gave me the finger and took off. Not all drivers are like this of course, but I've almost been killed by quite a few.

That being said, I think we should keep anecdotal evidence and personal biases out of the discussion about how to save lives, and stick to the stats, which are abundant and clear.

And this sort of response is why we can never have a real conversation about this topic in Toronto. Not once did I ever say that there aren't terrible drivers in Toronto putting cyclists in danger. I thought this was a pretty clear conclusion just from reading the article. I agree we should change things to make things safer for cyclists. I just wanted to offer my own perspective on where the anti-cyclist sentiment may be coming from in the first place, given how many people I know have complained about aggressive cyclists. The reason these people all hate aggressive cyclists is because they don't want to hurt or kill someone with their car, not because they hate bikes.

I literally gave you the other point of view in the exact format you presented your ideas. If you find that an unreasonable format (and you should), that's on you.

And related: the reason these people all hate aggressive drivers is because they are literally killing scores of people.

I don't really see why the format is unreasonable (when either you or I used it) and I don't disagree with your points on aggressive drivers killing people. That is obviously part of what is happening. I feel we should be implementing rules that make everyone safer. I was only offering another side to the story that the article omitted as it seemed to be slanted against drivers.

You criticized me for using it. It seems you think something about my response is unreasonable.

If you need it spelled out, the disturbing thing about your response if you used anecdotal examples to perpetuate and justify a negative sentiment towards a marginalized group that's being killed. It was in response to an article discussing how anti-cyclist sentiment is dangerous, and how it is killing people. Further, you generalized an entire population based on the actions of a few.

It's a common tactic to pivot every conversation about cyclist and pedestrian deaths into a conversation about how they are aggressive and don't follow rules. This tactic is one of the things preventing a real reduction in deaths in our streets. It's especially frustrating when that's been disproved repeated by studies.

I didn't criticize the format. I was criticizing the fact you're taking a side on the issue, when clearly the issue is more complicated and we need to address both sides if the city is going to come to a solution that is viable. I don't see how anecdotes are off the table for a discussion forum. Maybe if we were using this discussion to draft legislation, sure, let's do some controlled studies. But we are not drafting legislation here. We're talking about peoples opinions: the anti-cyclist sentiment in the city of Toronto. This sentiment is entirely based on the collective personal anecdotes of people who drive in Toronto. I shared a small subset of those anecdotes.

Cyclists are hardly marginalized in Toronto. To be marginalized is to be treated as insignificant. I'm pretty sure no one in Toronto, both drivers and non-drivers, could agree with that statement given the amount of attention cyclists have got over the years in Toronto press and city council.

I also made a point of not generalizing the entire population on the actions of a few. I specifically said, "not all cyclists in Toronto are like this".

There is no tactic being deployed here. I'm on the side of making things safer for everyone, including cyclists, and I feel that means lowering speed limits for drivers and coming down on unsafe cyclists. You want to turn this in to a victim-oppressor type situation when it is clearly not. And this is the problem I have with this whole conversation about cyclists in Toronto.

I was speaking as a pedestrian not as a motorist. The cyclists don't stop for pedestrians and will try and weave around you. They also don't follow any of the signage or stoplights.

As a long time resident and a daily pedestrian in downtown Toronto, I have seen far far more cyclists ignoring traffic regulations than car drivers. They feel they own the road and rules don't apply to them - ignoring stop signs, bus/streetcar stops and the safety of pedestrians, expecting everyone including pedestrians to yield to them. But when they are inconvenienced by a car they yell.

When a streetcar stops, you must stop, like all the other vehicles to let the passengers to get on/off, and not try to bully your way through.

If there is a stop sign or it's a red light, you must stop, period. Don't pretend you are just a pedestrian trying to "jaywalk" across.

If cyclists want to use the road, they need to obey the same rules like everyone else. They are not above pedestrians and cars as they think entitled to.

Not stopping at a stop sign is called the “Idaho Stop”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

It is legal elsewhere. Two studies argue that it seems to increase safety on the road.

Stopping when street cars stop is a must, however.

We are talking about Toronto here. Your laws don't automatically apply.

Toronto was designed for cars, not Canada's cities. Toronto just happens to be one of them.

Actually Toronto is one of the most transit-friendly cities in North America. Or so I've been told by a friend that lived there.

That doesn't mean it's bike-friendly though. Or that it should be. Biking in Toronto will probably be miserable half the year, probably a lot more than Netherlands too. It should be safe though.

Well, it has a subway, which by definition puts it on the list of transit-friendly cities, as only a handful of North American cities do. One issue though is the 1998 amalgamation. Toronto used to be just the actual dense city part, well covered by transit, and now it includes many former suburbs which are far less dense and are almost entirely car-based.

I live in Calgary and visit Toronto frequently. I don't drive. Calgary is a lot worse than Toronto from transit, biking or pedestrian perspective. Its almost like the city was actively designed to make it as difficult as possible for non-cars while making it reasonable for cars.

Take the 2nd and 3rd biggest cities in Canada (Montreal and Vancouver respectively) as an example. These places are meccas of cycling in North America. Generalizing Canada's cities is so typical of Torontonians, while their own city is the exception when it comes down to traffic and gun violence.

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