You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

23 Replies to “You Can Check Out Any Time You Like”

1. Little off topic but Pierre is on the latest Jordan Peterson episode on You Tube.

   1. Excellent interview!!
      Facts. Plans. Analysis.
      No piffle.

      Showing real class Pollivre congratulates Peterson on his free speech stance.

2. If the author means by “well on its way” that Calgary or Edmonton will figure it out first, and 25+ years later Ottawa will finally implement working policies, well then I guess I would agree with himherit.

   It would really help if Ottawa didn’t elect knuckle dragging progressives to make engineering decisions…
   … though Mark Sutcliffe is pretty good. And not a progressive.

   Gary Lai is an economist and award-winning author based in Vancouver
   That explains a lot.

   1. I haven’t actually be able to figure out what “awards” he has won.

   2. The only award Gary Lai could win would be awarded by the WEF.

3. Seriously, you havent experienced Ottawa until you are stuck in traffic, while an OC Transpo bus takes 12 minutes to unload three passengers at the stop in front of you.

   Including the one pretentious prick who just has to remove his bicycle from the front bus carrier in -20 degree weather.

   “My fingers are cold, I cant undo the bar!”

   1. Then that “pretentious prick” will either ride his bike down the center of the lane blocking all traffic, or on the sidewalk endangering pedestrians, because the road clearing here sucks.

      Funny to watch some carrying their bikes because road conditions are so bad.

4. Ottawa should just ban cars. Even EVs.

   And anyone living with fewer than ten people in a dwelling should pay a $2000/mon tax.

   Progressivism for the progs.

5. ottawa . the only place in the world to number the trees and put a brass number plate on each .

   the residents there get free snow shovelings from the feds all the way up to their doors

   1. “the residents there get free snow shovelings from the feds all the way up to their doors”

      I wish. We don’t even get mail delivery to our doors.

      They don’t number the trees. However they are doing a census of trees and diversity in neighbourhoods to determine if our tree canopy is racist or not providing poor areas equally.

6. I don’t have a problem with so called 15 minutes cities. Large cities such as NYC, San Fran, London are already there to some extent. My problem is with government control of movement within the 15 minutes vector. Just stay out of my life.

   1. I have no problem with anything that manifests as a result of A Smith’s invisible hand, just no way any city can do that because it is full of prog idiots.

7. From the linked article: “[…] residents from Orléans to Kanata, from Vanier to Richmond, can easily reach desired services or amenities, on average, in 16 minutes by bicycle.”

   Is that a summer or winter 16-minute bicycle ride? So, you ride 16 minutes in -10C weather and it takes 20 minutes to get your cold weather gear off at your destination plus 15 minutes to thaw any exposed flesh.

   On the bright side (there’s always a bright side), your ice cream won’t melt on the ride home.

   1. 20 minutes by bicycle in -20C on a windswept pothole filled winter road rural Ottawa road??? Are you freakin crazy? I live in Carp, a 20 minute drive to Kanata and 20 minutes by car @ 110KPH to the Ottawa – Armprior line!!!
      Those are horseballs Harry, don’t eat them.

8. The one throwaway paragraph near the end describing how the poor servant class will not live in this 15 minute utopia but will still have to commute from the hinterland each day tells you everything about the mindset of these people. Literally privilege for me but not for thee…

9. 15 minute Gulags….

   1. And pods – to accustom you to MAID

10. ‘in 16 minutes by bicycle’
    ‘Municipalities across North America are now exploring car-free streets.’

    You don’t really have to read very far into the article to understand where there going with this stuff. Just more enviro fascism.

11. Of course it is! I have visited both Ottawa and Washington D.C. several time and each time, on a Saturday and a Sunday morning I – we, my family – had trouble finding some place open for breakfast before 9 am. I live and work in a working class city as a production professional and I never have an issue getting breakfast (if I care to have someone make it for me and I buy it – before 7 am, even Sundays. Bluddy Ottawa has nothing open before 9 am on a Sunday (last time I visited). We daily working Canadians pay for this bluddy “15 minute city.” I hope they choke it honestly. I’m tired of workin’ my ass off, raising kids that pay more taxes than they thought they were gunna (I laugh cuz I told ’em they’re getting fleeced – as entrepreneurs (I was ever too lazy) they get it now) and paying for civil service making money for sucking off wealth producing Canadians. Bureaucrats are leeches! No wealth; all suck!

    1. Plenty of places open for breakfast in Ottawa… Coras, Denny’s on Merivale, A&W to name just a few.
       I know I often speak harshly of Ottawa, and all of it deserved, but I also have to be fair, and to say that it’s difficult to find places open for breakfast in Ottawa just isn’t.
       As far as checking out and leaving, I’ve done it. Ottawa is not even in my rearview mirror any more. I’m just sorry for my friends who still live there.

12. “…which can help solve inequality.”
    “Lower-income workers, especially manual laborers, often make long commutes to their workplace; this lifestyle will likely not change in a 15-minute city. ”

    That’s a pretty big “inequality” to gloss over Gary Lai.

    “Government intervention will help alleviate inequality, by making healthy foods affordable in small vendors and subsidizing housing if the prices are too high. ” Ahh, there it is, government action, in the government city will make it work, despite not working anywhere else.

13. What Ottawa is he(?) talking about? I live here and this does not make sense at all.

    First, from December to April (1/3 of the year) you are not getting anywhere by bike safely in 16 minutes. Road clearing of snow and ice is pathetic here. Priority is given to bike lanes over road and sidewalk clearing and all that creates is an extra slippery lane to skate on, we don’t need the Rideau Canal for skating anymore.

    Ottawa is physically divided by rivers into multiple geographic areas and development and services that follow these lines. Each area was their own city before amalgamation and the layout has not changed, nor has the thought process for providing services. What is not divided by rivers is divided by highways, Greenbelt and LRT infrastructure that have minimal crossing points. Public transportation is a joke.

    You stay local because it is too difficult not to.

14. You know, Ottawa has always been a fifteen-minute city, in the sense that you run out of worthwhile things to do there within the first 15 minutes.