The Globe and Mail reporter for this story engages in some ideological propaganda of the word:
The Canadian commute: By car, alone
…
Country-wide statistics on commuting, released Wednesday as part of the 2011 National Household Survey – the replacement for the cancelled long-form census – come amid growing recognition of the cost of congestion, which is hampering the economy and threatens to hurt the global appeal of the country’s cities…
The data also show the key role played by transit and other forms of sustainable transport [emphasis added] in getting people off the road in the country’s biggest urban centres…
Saskatchewan’s two main cities lagged well behind other urban centres in the incidence of sustainable transportation [emphasis added], defined [by whom?] as transit, walking and cycling…
In other words your vehicle is going to help destroy the planet. By the way the phrase “sustainable transport” (or “transportion”) does not occur in the StatsCan release (scroll down to “Almost three out of four commuters drove to work”).
A moment’s thought might reveal why “transit, walking and cycling” are unpopular in Saskatchewan’s two main cities for eight months of the year. This being the Globe and Mail of course, one may be sure that the author didn’t give it a moment’s thought.
They won’t be happy until we’re all living in mud huts beside the river, farming with sticks for plows begging for food from our betters like medieval serfs.
Oh Gawd the f**king Blubbers at work again. I bet every one of those filthy leftists drives its own car to work. Public transportation is a necessity in a large dense city – just try driving up Yonge Street in Toronto on a busy afternoon! – been there, done that, won’t do it again – and many other miserable experiences with a car-addicted relative. But it is a self-regulating system. After the misery of driving a car (let us say in Toronto) a poor wage-slave will be more than happy with the Go Train and the subway system to get to and from work, and to leave the streets to tradespeople who are paid to drive them. On the other hand, in a complementary way, as population thins, public transportation becomes less effective, and driving with individual cars becomes feasible and eventually the preferred method. In some cities, Toronto being one and Washington DC another, it is common to drive to outer bus stops or subway terminals, and enter the city by public transport.
WE DO NOT NEED ANY G*D-D**NED LEFTIST degenerates to muck about in a system which takes care of itself. And who the H*** defines “sustainable” anyway?
Could it be that the SKers are getting a little feeble? Losing toughness? When I was in university in Ottawa I took the bus, and it involved a transfer, too. And the Ottawa bus service used to be slow. In -40 deg C it isn’t fun. I was grateful that my Dad would sometimes pick me up, but that wasn’t always possible. Then living in St. John’s – absolutely beastly climate, except for a few days in the summer. Sure, I take the bus, and I’m not a young man. Sometimes, I will admit, when feeling particularly feeble I will take a taxi.
Very few walkers or bikers are able to sustain their transport during a prairie blizzard.
Rob Huck hits it. Its hard to ride a bicycle when the snow is going sideways.
Personally, I drive a mammoth crew cab. I could have bought smaller, but I didn’t. Because I have to share the road with eedjits like the one who wrote this article for the Blob&Snail.
The writer is suited to taking care of a horse.
They have the “shovelling horseshyte” well in hand…
I note that the Globe and Mail uses drivers to deliver their product by car each morning at 6 am.
Given the product, I doubt that’s sustainable.
Why not “sustainable” transportation?
Taking a bus at -40° C? Not fun? Yeah, sure, and my old man used to walk 20 miles to school naked in the middle of winter ’cause he couldn’t afford clothes. Oh yeah, and it was uphill both ways. And all he had to eat for lunch was a jam sandwich. Actually, his family was so poor that all he had in his lunch was a picture of a jam sandwich. And even then his mother told him not to lose the picture because it was the only one she had.
You say the buses were slow at -40° C? Really? How about inert? Call me feeble, John, but being outside at -40° is no country for old men.
When I look down from an airplane and see cars on the road near a city, I see freedom. Every vehicle has a driver who is choosing where to go, and when, and in what kind of car, and what to do when they arrive.
It’s too bad that the concept troubles the earnest writer for Canada’s National Soothsayer.
Cars are the cigarettes of the future
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/05/analysis-will-cars-be-the-cigarette-of-the-future/
Solution to urban gridlock is simple. Abolish the taxi monopoly. Lots of people will organize jitneys and the rush hour traffic will shrink by a third.
Picture! hah! we woulda dreamed of havin’ a picture of a samwich!
Now,WE had it tough! I had to get up at three o’clock in the morning in -60 Winter weather,and walk twelve miles to school battling wolves the entire way!
And, if Elizabeth May and her Party of environmental lunatics ever have their way, we will all be forced to live in huge apartment buildings located on a rail line,no cars anywhere in sight.
Here in the allegedly sunny Okanagan, it takes my wife 8 minutes to drive to work,or 45 minutes by bus,which run every 45 minutes,so she could wait 44 minutes after a long 12 hour shift then have a 45 minute drive to within about three blocks of our house,OR she can drive there in 8-10 minutes.
More f***ing commuter planning by Toronto social engineers is NOT needed in this Country.
Again a page/slogan taken directly from the pages of Agenda 21 – the blueprint for global collectivist government and neo-feudalism. The personal vehicle is liked directly to free mobility and free mobility is poison to the contained reliance the globalist engineers have planned for humanity. Note that the author of this repugnant concept makes no distinction between fossil fuel vehicles or earth friendly e-cars – all are bad because there are just too damn many – and by extension of this control freak reasoning, there are just too damn many people – but they’re working on that “problem” as well. You must surrender you personal mobility, security, privacy and be herded onto state controlled mass transit systems which take you to only the places you are allowed to go.
Whenever you see/hear/read some social engineering blurb about too much personal freedom and personal choice you have to realize the source is misanthropic.
Public transit will never good, period. It will always suck, like every other centrally planned anything.
Congestion is a serious problem. To that end, perhaps cities would like to end laws that basically mandate sprawl and institute road tolls instead of gas taxes. And end taxi cartels.
If cities want to solve the pollution problem then a congestion tax like London UK is effective. Basically you need a permit to drive your vehicle into the core; cost of permit based on pollution emitted. Most like it because it significantly frees up downtown parking. Nobody’s freedom is impaired. Leftist City Serfs deserve public transit.
LAS you recall all the sci-fi movies and novels we have been inundated with – all of which paint a future where technology responds to human need – like the multi-level metropolis transit corridors and personal vehicles which are stacked on levels to accommodate individual transit? Obviously the psychocrats think it’s easier to repress a problem with removing liberty and personal choice than letting the market and science respond to it.
Again, their (collectivist engineers) vision is misanthropic where science and free markets are responsive to human need. Is it any wonder they (psychocrats) are coopting science and destroying demand markets?
I might add if you have mass transit running things. Like every monopoly you will have massive fares. With strikes every 6 months.
Another opium dream, from yet another lefty Green Religionist, that drives his own car.
Because deep down they all know they are better than others. The choosen.
The writer of this article must agree with Stalin’s transportation policy. The proletariat could live two families to a flat and either walk or take public transportation to their place of work. The enemies of the people could live 100 to a barracks and walk to work. Those that were more equal than the rest could have state motor pool cars and dachas on the Black Sea.
You want to see public transportation at it’s best? I recently visited both Hong Kong and Shanghai and their underground public transportation was impressive, fast and cheap to ride!
We have the second largest country on the planet with only 34 million people. We have lots of room and it’s self regulating if only they stopped jamming more people into the few major cities that have a problem. Civil service types that probably make up 20% of a cities population do not have to commute if they had facilities in the fringe areas, considering they are mostly drones anyway. Ottawa is a prime example. Why is Fisheries and Oceans, Indian affairs,DND even located there ? They could be anywhere with no difference in efficiency ( involuntary bout of laughter)and much cheaper overhead. Diversify and stop expanding the human bee hives. We are not short of room.
I remember the last bus strike that happened in Calgary . The traffic flowed better and there was less traffic jams. Once you remove the slow moving busses that are constantly stopping on the street to pick up or drop off passengers or the c-trains that are running accross busy streets and tying up traffic lights or intersections the traffic flows much better.
Rural folks should go on strike, barricade all routes into major cities for a week and let the Moron Class of journalists explain why life is pitiful, brutal and awful without modern technology.
How do journalists get to be so stupid?
If you actually read the article, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the environment. The problem is increasing commute times in the face of urban sprawl, poor infrastructure, and increasing population. Just because the Earth can handle infinite cars forever and always doesn’t mean our shitty infrastructure can.
I have an unusual idea. How about we ration all goods and services by having every individual make up their own mind how much they wish to pay for it. That way we wouldn’t be forcing bad economic decisions on anyone. Might actually work.
When I was young, we were so poor that if I hadn’t been a boy, I would have had nothing to play with.
It’s simple… I can drive to work in 24 minutes, or I can take public transit for 3 hours to get to the same destination.
Andrew:
Article:
AGW is a given with the G&M crowd. And agreed that the article’s main thrust is that cars are bad because commutes take too long; but cars are still bad, and I read it as another advert for non-car or public transit. I’m a little suspicious that those who coined “sustainable transportation, defined as transit, walking and cycling” have the slightest intention of improving roads or parking for cars…
I’m sick of this crap. In Winnipeg, a frozen wasteland 6 months of the year, we’re building friggin bike lanes everywhere. The stupidest part is how they’re just a widened lane identified by paint on the asphalt THAT CAN’T BE SEEN UNDER SNOW. Today, in ideal bike riding weather, looking out the window at a main traffic artery during peak hours one *maybe* sees a bicycle every 20 minutes. Meanwhile, none of the traffic lights have sensors, so in rush hour 4 lanes of traffic must stop and wait at intersections WHERE NO CARS EVEN CROSS THE STREET.
If you can’t handle the commute, move you residence or move your job. It’s that simple. I live in Oshawa and the commute into Toronto is hell. I have several neighbour’s who have moved and they say they can’t handle the commute. Luckily I work the other way and weather and energy level permitting I use my bicycle to go to work. There is no way in heck I would live here and try to commute to Toronto.
Wait a while now! Wasn’t this the National Household Survey that our intellectual superiors said couldn’t possibly work because nobody could be hauled off to jail for having better things to do than to tell some nosey parker in Ottawa have many toilets he had?
Someone naive enough not to know that the only thing the Globe ever prints that isn’t a pack of lies is last night’s sports results (or the commments, when they see fit to leave them open) could be forgiven for asking were they talking rubbish then, or were they talking rubbish now.
How dare cities and provinces not implement the UN’s Agenda 21, because that is exactly what this is. Force people into urban reserves where they become totally dependent on government and are must easier to control.
When I lived in Vancouver, I lived 2 blocks from my office and walk time was 2-3 minutes depending on how long it took to cross Burrard street (the most hazardous part of the commute). Now I drive to work because my office is straight uphill from my house and I find my patients seem to take umbrage to my dripping sweat on them as I try to cool down from the 20 minute uphill walk. OTOH, it takes me between 4.5 – 10.5 minutes to drive there with the 4.5 minute time hitting every green light and no traffic on the road. Now that traffic has increased I find that I am starting to get my road rage back as I’ve actually had to wait for a second light to turn left.
I almost always walk to the local hospital as, like every other hospital in the country, there’s no parking when I do my hospital rounds. Being able to park in front of stores instead of 1+ miles away like in Vancouver has meant that I’ve gotten spoiled and have started to drive short distances of 1-2 miles instead of walking. I’d prefer to cycle but I refuse to wear a bicycle helmet and don’t need any more court battles with the RCMP.
Back in my younger days, I’d routinely walk 4 miles each way to the university in the winter and cycle in the summer. I’d put far more miles on my bicycle then than I do on my vehicle now as I don’t have time to go for pleasure drives. Walking is a great way to work on projects in my head as I walk and it’s far less aggravating than driving given the number of idiots on the road who seem to believe that speed limits are to be adhered to even in the absence of visible police.
As far as taking a bus goes, you won’t see me inside one. What’s needed instead of transit are individual autonomous vehicles that people can rent by the mile which would take them to their location and then head off to pick up the closest passenger in the queue. I detest long commutes and would prefer to have a chauffeur which would allow me to do some work during the drive. A colleague of mine hired a chauffeur to take him to BCMA meetings in Vancouver which allowed him to get 4 hours of work done during the drive instead of experiencing extreme road rage when one hits the almost stationary traffic a little past Chilliwack which persists for the whole drive through Vancouver.
Just like the “paperless office” high speed internet and video conferencing was supposed to eliminate the need for people to gather in a central location. Unfortunately, the “paperless office” is an oxymoron as high speed printers have simply made it possible to create huge numbers of documents very quickly and electronic commuting is reserved for a select few whose value to a company exceeds the loss of control over them by their staying at home and working. Every flu season, I fantasize about controlling a humanoid robot in my office to examine patients so I don’t have to be exposed to a plethora of new viruses. I’ve managed to live within walking distance of my place of work for the last 40 years and was hoping that by now self-driving vehicles would be in existence so I could move further out into the country.
The reason not to walk in Saskatoon and Regina is to avoid being stabbed to death as happened here.
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/gets+year+sentence+deadly+stabbing/8584717/story.html
This sentence was actually 10 years but the average is 6 where upon the killer is out on the street in 2to4 years. There are more killers wandering around loose in these two cities than most anyplace except maybe Winnipeg.
This “phenomena” won’t stop until Sask. citizens start applying for C.C.W. permits and demand provincial administration as per the Constitution.
When a socialist hears the word “jitney” uttered out loud,
the Pavlovian reaction is much like that of a devil in a
possessed person hearing the first word of an exorcism
ceremony.
Mass transit means mass political patronage, mass unionized jobs,
the public held hostage, mass corruption, like a certain high speed
railway to Las Vegas from Boondocks, Calif.
Remember how it was lauded that we’d be able to work at home in our pj’s. Why isn’t there a push for that to help solve conjestion problems?
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