Business Owners Are Using AI-Generated 'Concerned Residents' To Fight Proposed Bus Line In Toronto 138
A group of Bathurst Street business owners in Toronto is using AI-generated personas to oppose a proposed bus lane project that would eliminate parking spaces in favor of faster transit. "This may be the first Toronto transit controversy involving angry AI, but tensions have been simmering between drivers and, well, everyone else for some time," reports Toronto Life. Critics argue that better transit is essential for a livable city, while opponents claim the change threatens small businesses and accessibility. From the report: A group of Bathurst business owners are bent out of shape over a recent proposal for priority transit lanes between Eglinton Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard, part of the city's new RapidTO program. According to the city, the transit lanes would shave up to 7 minutes off some trips during peak commuting hours. It's good news for anyone who has ever cursed the TTC while waiting to catch a bus in inclement weather. Of course, the added convenience for transit commuters would come at a slight cost for drivers, requiring the removal of at least 138 paid street parking spaces to make way for the new lanes. Opposition to the development has sprung up under the banner of Protect Bathurst, a group of hopping mad local business owners claiming that the lack of street parking will make shopping a nightmare for car-bound customers and will cause problems for people with mobility issues.
Notably, Protect Bathurst has no spokesperson or contact info listed on its website. The page is registered to a food marketing consultant employed by Summerhill Market and looks eerily similar to Protect Dufferin, another group of "concerned residents" advocating for the same cause. But this cookie-cutter approach goes even further: author and urbanist Shawn Micallef has found that the people speaking out in the group's allegedly grassroots videos appear to be AI-generated. Brad McMullen, the president of Summerhill Market, which opened an outpost on Bathurst in 2019, says he doesn't know anything about the campaign's use of AI. He says he isn't necessarily opposed to the new bus lanes but believes that three weeks' notice from the city is not enough time for his business to adapt. "We purchased and invested in this location because of the available street parking, and then we figured out the loading situation, which happens on the street," he says. "I don't think Summerhill Market would work here with these bus lanes."
Notably, Protect Bathurst has no spokesperson or contact info listed on its website. The page is registered to a food marketing consultant employed by Summerhill Market and looks eerily similar to Protect Dufferin, another group of "concerned residents" advocating for the same cause. But this cookie-cutter approach goes even further: author and urbanist Shawn Micallef has found that the people speaking out in the group's allegedly grassroots videos appear to be AI-generated. Brad McMullen, the president of Summerhill Market, which opened an outpost on Bathurst in 2019, says he doesn't know anything about the campaign's use of AI. He says he isn't necessarily opposed to the new bus lanes but believes that three weeks' notice from the city is not enough time for his business to adapt. "We purchased and invested in this location because of the available street parking, and then we figured out the loading situation, which happens on the street," he says. "I don't think Summerhill Market would work here with these bus lanes."
AI really is the most anti-social tech (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess if you want to count the invention of propaganda there's that but that's been around since we invented religion so. I mean I guess it is technically a technology but I don't think of it as such since it's thousands of years old.
I definitely am not so sure we're going t
Re:AI really is the most anti-social tech (Score:5, Insightful)
How is "AI" at fault here?
Modern capitalism, based on grift, corruption and lying is the problem, not the technology.
So many examples of similar tricks without "AI" are available that I'm curious why would one try to divert attention from the real problem to the tool it is manifested through.
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How is "AI" at fault here?
I don't think he's really saying that AI as an abstract concept, or even technology has fault. As he said there are other more acute things, but I do see his point that AI is a mass enabler of colossal quantities of low grade antisocial behaviour. And Stalin might have been a truly evil genocidal dictator but he was not wrong when he said "quantity has a quality all of its own".
AI lowers the barrier of doing a shitty job of something so low it can now be done in vast quantities and
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The thing is, it doesn't NEED to be low quality to have the anti-social effect. All is needs is to be the enabler of anti-social motives (in which I include greed).
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How is "AI" at fault here?
Modern capitalism, based on grift, corruption and lying is the problem, not the technology.
So many examples of similar tricks without "AI" are available that I'm curious why would one try to divert attention from the real problem to the tool it is manifested through.
Oh, it is humans doing what humans do alright. The AI just makes it easier. I just had ChatGPT generate a fight between neighbors about banning chickens. 8^)
That business owners would not be happy about the prospect of losing customer access is not something that could just be waved off like their concerned are not valid. I'm pretty certain that they could demonstrate a loss of business if no one could park near their buildings.
And it is very likely that businesses will suffer. So the overriding questi
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Businesses are assuming that they will lose more customers due to lack of parking than they will gain from increased access due to people taking the bus to their stores.
I'm not sure that this is a correct assumption. I think they may gain more business from people taking the bus.
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Yes, but that's not the problem being addressed. The problem is that it makes deception trivially easy. The "concerned residents" aren't real people. If they used the AI to generate a "concerned businesses" letter and put their name on it, nobody would have a reasonable objection.
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Be honest here bro, grift, corruption, and lying happen in every 'ism, not just Modern Capitalism.
In other words, it is not Capitalism that is driving the behavior.
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In this example, the driver was capitalism, or, more specifically, greed.
Yes, this is a specialized instance of a more general problem, but the ggp was arguing for the more general problem, and just used this a example. (OTOH, the article seems to have only been arguing for the narrowly defined problem.)
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Because now it's easy.
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Remember that when people are pushing to allow AI to vote: who is the one pushing it?
How is this not fraud? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like this qualifies as something that is blatantly illegal.
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What laws would this violate? Unethical sure, blatantly illegal? In what way? /. is filled with posters that would celebrate this if it were to their benefit. Lying, cheating and gaming is business as usual, it's only an outrage when someone else does it. We live in an era of social media that is manipulated on a massive scale with bots, and yet this is not only wrong but "blatantly illegal". Hmmm.
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This is just absurd reductionism. Not all things are equally bad.
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Well, it's not blatantly illegal. It might qualify as fraud, but you'd need to work to make the case. I mean it is "deceptive actions intended to earn a profit", but I don't think that's quite how fraud is usually defined. If it were, most advertisers would be guilty of fraud.
Street parking does not signifcantly affect busine (Score:5, Insightful)
Businesses love street parking, but repeated studies show street parking does not significantly affect sales.
The problem is cars are huge. Most businesses get one or two places in front of them, with other stores using up the rest of the slots. Given sales per hour, this is basically irrelevant.
For stores that sell light stuff, the added foot traffic from bus stops will more than make up for street parking.
For things that sell heavy gear, a free delivery program is practically a necessity unless you have huge parking lot behind the store - which also removes the need for street parking.
Street parking is a convenience for very few drivers, not the businesses. If you depend on cars for sales, you need ample and significant parking lots, street parking becomes an insult to the customer, not a solution.
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Businesses love street parking, but repeated studies show street parking does not significantly affect sales.
Depending on how they are eliminated this is false. When street parking is eliminated in favour of public transit and walking spaces the studies show that streek parking actually *hurts* sales.
It's a strange situation you see play out the world over, everyone complains about the threat of pedestrianization, but after it happens they are wildly better off for it, even offsetting the losses during the construction period (construction periods definitely hurt sales as you can access the shop neither easily by
Re: Street parking does not signifcantly affect bu (Score:2)
"Studies show"...
While this can be true, if you go find those studies you'll see it listing the criteria for which it isn't universally true; or toss the study because it's garbage.
This particular street won't see an increase in pedestrian traffic via the bus route, it'll be speeding past these businesses like they weren't even there.
Within 3 years it'll be a ghost town of a street with all but 1 or 2 businesses gone; some corporatatiin or billionaire will then buy it up and replace it with something else a
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Right, because you don't benefit from bike lanes. They didn't go in for your benefit.
And since when is this about bike lanes? Or is it just about you?
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Right, because you don't benefit from bike lanes.
Sure. But the thing is, in all of these cities, bike lanes (on average) carry fewer people than the car lanes they replaced. I FOIA-d Seattle's DOT and the bike lanes in Downtown often carry 10-100 _times_ fewer people than the car lanes.
And since when is this about bike lanes? Or is it just about you?
I want my city to be liveable for people, not a playground for bike bros.
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The people who get the most infuriated about bike lanes are the same people who drive into the city once or twice a year.
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I support bike lanes where they make sense, but did someone just establish a bike lane quote for city planners? Why are they suddenly putting bike lanes in places where no one uses them?
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More than likely Federal grant dollars they had to use or lose...so, they spent it all and put lanes all over the place without any studies....
That's how most of these type things happen.
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So you're saying you'd prefer 10% more traffic on the road with you congesting things? Every bicycle you see is a car not on the road.
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And that doesn't even take into account the second-order effects of selling out your city.
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First off, there's lots of bikes that can fit more than one person, albeit not five. But five people on five bikes takes up less space than a single car. And we all know that while you *can* fit five people in your car, you *don't* except for very rare trips. Most of the time, you just drive the empty space around. And that empty space takes up road space.
Listen, I live in a big city (London) and I drive a car. I'm aware of the benefits and conveniences of a car. But I'm also aware of its inconveniences and
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First off, there's lots of bikes that can fit more than one person, albeit not five.
I'm sorry, I spilled my tea. Have you SEEN Seattle bike riders? I don't think I have ever seen a double bike here. I've seen riders with children, but only a few times.
When you adopt silly positions like this, you just sound like so...rigid.
And yet, you don't have any objections that are not based on feelings?
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I don't think I have ever seen a double bike here. I've seen riders with children,
Right so you have seen bikes carrying more than one person. Why exactly did that make you spill your tea? Such bikes are getting more common where I live now, and are generally a good indication that people feel entire journeys by bike are safe.
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Great, you can fit five people in your car. Most people can. Almost nobody does. It's estimated that 90% of commuter car trips are just the driver. So, yes, each bike you see is taking a whole car off the road.
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But the thing is, in all of these cities, bike lanes (on average) carry fewer people than the car lanes they replaced. I FOIA-d Seattle's DOT and the bike lanes in Downtown often carry 10-100 _times_ fewer people than the car lanes.
I doubt that. It's probably a case of bad statistics with a misaligned way to count. First, bicycles use less space than a car, and a bike lane can be much narrower than a car. A single car lane provides more than enough space for a bi-directional bicycle road. It also needs less parking space. So you save double in space: Less moving space and less parking space. Second, a bike is much lighter than a car, and a bike lane needs less maintenance as a car lane, making a bicycle lane much cheaper.
I want my city to be liveable for people, not a playground for bike bros.
I want my cit
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I doubt that. It's probably a case of bad statistics with a misaligned way to count
Feel free to fire a FOIA request, it's free. And no, there's nothing misaligned. It's the data from bike counters they put on bike lanes. And it's no wonder, Seattle is very hilly and biking in the rain and cold (i.e. most of the year) is not fun at all.
And I initially started suspecting that something is not right when I had to commute every day through a congested street, with literally _nobody_ passing me in the bike lane. That made the street congested in the first place.
First, bicycles use less space than a car, and a bike lane can be much narrower than a car.
A typical bike lane in Seattle
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There is no pivot to urbanism in America. You are still useless dominated by car dependent suburbs with no sign of abatement except in a very small handful of places.
America's post world war 2 prosperity allowed the massive resources required to become and maintain car dependence, not the other way around. And America's slide away from prosperity will lead away from car dependence due to how expensive it is. American style suburbs are a massive money pit fueled by debt and taxes on lower income brackets. Wh
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Where I live...the greater New Orleans area...they put TONs of bike lanes all over the place in NOLA proper and Metairie etc.
Seems a huge waste as that you almost NEVER see a bicycle using them....and they took out lanes of traffic making it more difficult to drive in areas....especially ones where they poured concrete 'curbs' to separate the bike lanes from the regular lane.
These barriers can be hard to see at night and
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What you did there was pick a few cities that had bike lanes and claimed they are a "stinking mess. " No definitions, no statistics, no actual evidence, just a bunch of unsupported beliefs that disagree with mine. Mine are based on statistics and actual news reporting rather than rando guys talking on the internet.
Stating your opinion without any evidence is just you being loud, not convincing. It makes me think less of you, not less of bike lanes.
Show me things like this if you want to participate in
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I have an even better way: ban bikes in cities in the US. No bikes = no bike deaths. Meanwhile, the traffic speed will improve, and the city will be much better.
Way more people die in vehicles compared to riding bikes. How about we also ban cars and save an order of magnitude more lives?
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Way more people die in vehicles compared to riding bikes.
Not the point. My point is: banning bikes will solve the bike the deaths problem. Immediately and completely.
How about we also ban cars and save an order of magnitude more lives?
Agreed. Once we have a reasonable replacement. I think, within the next 5-10 years once Waymo expands.
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My point is: banning bikes will solve the bike the deaths problem. Immediately and completely.
Ok, but that was just a joke, not a serious point to make in a discussion about bike lanes. If you put all the people using bikes in cares that increases congestion.
I think, within the next 5-10 years once Waymo expands.
Self driving cars aren't an alternative that would help with congestion or really anything. For people driving from outside the city into it, the cars still need to be parked or there would be basically rush hour traffic all day, so there's little benefit for them. For people going from place to place in a city, they're basically just expensi
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Ok, but that was just a joke, not a serious point to make in a discussion about bike lanes.
Not a joke. It's a position based on actual facts.
If you put all the people using bikes in cares that increases congestion.
And not the lies like the one that you're telling. Bikes and transit do NOT decrease congestion in the US. Certainly, not in Seattle where I live. I have the data from our local DoT, bike lanes routinely carry 10-100 _times_ fewer passengers than the car lanes that they replaced.
It's also funny reading the blogs saying "study after study" and failing flat when asked to cite the studies from the US (and not the ones looking at Manhattan). E.g.: https://pmc. [nih.gov]
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Not a joke. It's a position based on actual facts.
Oh. Wow so you really made an absolutely stupid statement like that and expected people would take you seriously?
Yikes.
Now you're trying to say that replacing a car with a bike lowers congestion? When you say "bike" are you thinking of a "bus"? Bikes are the little single person vehicles that you peddle.
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Why are you speaking for "people" while voicing just your insignificant personal opinion?
Re:Street parking does not signifcantly affect bus (Score:4, Interesting)
Odd, because bikes are everywhere in Vancouver nowadays. Especially with e-bikes, lots of people are commuting to work by bike. Heck, many offices now have showers available for people who ride.
Sure, maybe 15 years ago when the bike lanes came in they were underutilized. But these days, Vancouver's bike scene is fairly active. Enough to the point those mass protest rides haven't happened in a number of years.
And in Vancouver, it's happening all year round.
Of course, I don't bike, I take transit around because driving is a nightmare, but then again, transit makes the process efficient. And I'm not carrying heavy things every single day so no, the car isn't making life any more convenient. When population is growing by a million people, adding a million cars is not an option. You can't build roads to accomodate them all. Texas tried with a 38 lane highway (yes, 19 lanes each way). It just got congested 2 years after opening.
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Just because you have agoraphobia and think that outside is dark and full of terrors, doesn't mean an average person does. Actually, average people, when they have a phobia, either try to endure it or try to change themselves - with a therapy for example. Only the seriously crazy ones try to change the whole world to accomodate their fears.
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Odd, because bikes are everywhere in Vancouver nowadays. Especially with e-bikes, lots of people are commuting to work by bike. Heck, many offices now have showers available for people who ride.
And there is not a single car in Vancouver, right?
The statistics are pretty clear. The percentage of bike trips in Vancouver has been stagnant around 8% for quite a while. Their 2040 target is a whopping 12%.
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No. I'm saying that adding bike _lanes_ increases congestion.
All data disagrees with you. Do a 5minute google search and educate yourself rather than ranting about something you don't like.
For a simple reason: people HATE biking for commutes.
No they don't. People HATE being able to not get to their destination. A bike path that is broken in places and requires you to drive on the road does not lead to much in the way of increased cycling. But a bike path that provides transit from source to destination is hugely popular and becomes widely used.
Example: Seattle fucked up the traffic with bike lanes
While there's undoubtably examples of it being done poorly I'm curious as to
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Obviously Canada is quite different than the US
Re: Street parking does not signifcantly affect bu (Score:2)
Banning cars in the city will have the same effect. And even better: the air quality improves rapidly. Which will reduce long term deaths.
It is brain dead argumentations like yours that make life hard for everyone. You call people who create bike lanes 'misery pushers'. But look into the mirror when you want to see one.
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Banning cars in the city will have the same effect. And even better: the air quality improves rapidly.
Well, yeah. The city will die, and a new one with better government will spring up.
It is brain dead argumentations like yours that make life hard for everyone. You call people who create bike lanes 'misery pushers'.
OK, what are the advantages of misery lanes? They increase congestion (because the bikers are imaginary), and they just make cities ugly.
And we actually have a perfect indicator of misery: the birth rate. It's a reliable objective indicator of happiness and contentment. In urban areas the birth rate is higher in two kinds of areas: where the happy people live, and where the poorest people live. Can you guess which areas hav
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Paris, Amsterdam, whatever. I don't live there, and I care about the country where I'm living.
Well, you appear to live in Seattle, yet you're perfectly happy to talk about studies showing problems with bikes in Canada. So it's pretty clear that what you're really doing is looking for evidence that suits your narrative, and you don't give two shits where it comes from. And the only evidence you can find is from US and Canadian cities.
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Well, you appear to live in Seattle, yet you're perfectly happy to talk about studies showing problems with bikes in Canada. So it's pretty clear that what you're really doing is looking for evidence that suits your narrative, and you don't give two shits where it comes from. And the only evidence you can find is from US and Canadian cities.
I'm sorry, are you an LLM with a context window of 16 tokens? You don't like that I cite problems with bikes in Canada, when talking about bikes and transit in Canada?
Re:Street parking does not signifcantly affect bus (Score:5, Insightful)
My goodness, with both US *and* Canadian cities there, you've practically captured the entire *world's* experience of bike lanes. Seriously, you only have to look at Paris, Copenhagen or Amsterdam to realise you're talking absolute bilge.
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China is a great example. Bikes used to be _the_ main means of transport. People threw them away as soon as _anything_ else started to become available.
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Listen, if you want to live in a fantasy world inside your own head, I’m not going to stand in your way.
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You supported your assertion that Denmark practices "ruthless population control" with a graph of Copenhagen's population, with no evidence as to what might be responsible for those changes. That is not data.
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Copenhagen got to a place where it is right now through ruthless population control
Great work talking out of your arse. Copenhagen never had population control, they simply had major part of the city rebuilt which resulted in a significant portion of the people temporarily moving out as part of the Five Finger plan.
Honestly I'm glad you used Amsterdam in the past tense. We're happy to be rid of you.
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London enters the chat.
We're not at the level of Amsterdam or Copenhagen, yet. From what I gather compared to Paris it's a mixed bag because like Paris it's a massive metro area with various competing organizations controlling, where IIUC, the Paris Mayor has more influence in the centre relative to the London mayor, but less further out. I do like the direction Hidalgo is taking things, and I like the direction Sadiq is taking things too.
I can criticise many parts of London but to me it feels a different c
Re: Street parking does not signifcantly affect bu (Score:3)
A bit of an over reaction, donâ(TM)t you think? Lakeshore to Eglinton is 7.5 km, and weâ(TM)re talking about 138 spaces. Driving on Bathurst is already hard work in places, especially the southern end, which I suspect is probably where these spaces will be removed from. This will effectively widen the road making life easier for drivers, until they fill that up with congestion too. There are lots of side streets around there anyway for people to park on.
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All cities I know have improved since they introduced bike lanes and reduced car traffic downtown. Cars are clunky, loud, dirty and stink, and each car which does not drive downtown is an improvement.
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Contrary to your opinion, I would say Seattle and Vancouver, BC greatly improved over the last 10 years.
If you're a real estate developer, interested in despoiling the city and then fucking off to your lake-side mansion in Nevada.
Otherwise? It's worse in every regard: crime, housing prices, commute times, homelessness, public drug use, student achievements, quality of infrastructure, etc.
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Cars: they make the city so wildly unpleasant that even down and outs won't go there.
You know that's not the sterling defence of car culture you think it is. Also likely incorrect.
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Cars: they make the city so wildly unpleasant that even down and outs won't go there.
Car-oriented cities are indeed unpleasant when all you want is to drink/drug all day.
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When all you cite is shitty examples you get shitty results. On the flip side there are countless examples all over the rest of the world that prove the contrary.
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Counter-examples are Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Montreal. Bike infrastructure has significantly improved all of those cities.
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Bike infrastructure is improving London as well.
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I've never seen decently implemented bike lanes. Generally they are arguably worse than not having any. Bicycles really need separate grade, but just TRY to figure out how to do that. (Either that, or cars need to be second-class users of the road...and just imagine the uproar that would cause in a US city. I've seen it work on a couple of military bases...though really the first class users of the road were the pedestrians.)
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Yes, but here's the amazing thing. It turns out that you're just not that important! And neither am I. Because if you go off in a massive huff because you can't drive into the city, *but* a bunch of other people start shopping more often in the city because they prefer streets with far fewer cars, then the net effective is that there's more shoppers. And would you know it, this often is exactly what happens. A small number of people piss off into the sunset muttering darkly about car bans, and shopkeepers d
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That was happening anyway. In fact, that happening is a large part of why the cities degenerated...they were depending on the taxes on businesses to maintain their infrastructure, and when people shifted their purchases to the suburbs, the funding disappeared.
All bot traffic soon (Score:2)
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The internet isn't going to be all bot traffic. But it will be heavy bot traffic around certain issues that someone is motivated enough to spin up about. That makes it more insidious, as you can still talk to real people and even do that the majority of the time. But in that brief, critical moment when you hear about "white genocide in South Africa", or the virtues of the latest crapcoin, it'll be a bot.
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The problem is... (Score:4, Informative)
Toronto has a lot of roads that are heavily used. It's a multi-million person city, and the planning around traffic has rarely been logically addressed. Developers have influenced the city leaders to permit building new developments with very little setback from the street, no dedicated off-street loading areas, and very little concern for any congestion they cause, all to maximize profit.
The usage of street space has not been done logically: It's been VERY political, and pandered to many special interest groups. Bicycle lanes are put in on main arteries with little thought as to how many people actually use them: In a city that experiences genuine winters when VERY few people actually use the bike lanes, it's more politics that dictates the extensive deployment of bike lanes on arteries, and less logic.
Toronto needs to look logically at the doling out of limited street pace to maximize benefit and improve mobility for *everybody*. Toronto has a very poor public transit system compared to other major cities around the world, and needs to improve that desperately. In the mean time, Toronto needs to rise above the whining of the special interest groups and be intelligent and sensible about sharing of street space.
Considering the quality of the city government and their pandering to developers, I am not very hopeful this can happen.
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Are you saying bicycle lanes are a waste because they aren't used in the winter?
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I would say YES to that.
A car can be used year round.
But they are a waste where I live....because no one uses the damned bike lanes hardly at all.
They took up good car road space for bike lanes that are rarely ever used ANY time of the year.
Apparently they got grants for these things...and just put them in to spend the money without any study to see if anyone would use them in most places...at least in the US.
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A car can be used year round.
so can a bike provided cities don't treat bikes as a second class of transport to be abandoned at a moment's notice. And here is the proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Title: Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)
But they are a waste where I live....because no one uses the damned bike lanes hardly at all.
That's because you have shitty bike lanes. People aren't going to cycle on one good bike lane if they have to risk their neck to get to it.
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The usage of street space has not been done logically: It's been VERY political, and pandered to many special interest groups.
Street space is always very political, it cannot be otherwise. You're taking a bunch of public land, and a whole heap of public money and dedicating it to the public good in one way or another. That is inherently a political act. Just because you personally don't like the results, or find the results illogical (they may be) doesn't make it any less political if they had done what yo
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oh yeah, and bitch about bike lanes again. Why not just get rid of the cars? They're just a misery generator that causes cities to be a stinking mess. The moment you let cars on the streets you get hobos shitting on your front door.
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Err....the streets were built FOR CARS...it's just they are being nice enough to let bicycles on them too....
They weren't built for bikes....that's not their primary purpose.
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Some people like living in areas where they don't have to get in a car to drive 20 minutes to go places. Cities have more workplaces and more housing. The housing can be of varied sizes based on what people want. If you're the type that needs a giant lawn to mow then city life isn't for you, but hundreds of millions think otherwise
Re: Good for drivers (Score:2)
The large multi million dollar houses on Palmerston, a couple of streets over from the Bathurst St in the story tells me you have no idea what youâ(TM)re talking about. I used to near this part of Toronto and life was fantastic.
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Google maps shows me street parking and driveways ...
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Public transport is for poor people, students, elderly and tourists. Everywhere.
Even in say Singapore people will call a private car the single best way to get extra time. Public transport is an incredibly inefficient use of your time.
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Public transport is for poor people, students, elderly and tourists. Everywhere
There's a word for this. Let me think... Oh yes! "wrong"! That's the word.
I live in London. Almost everyone takes public transport. I don't even own a car. I could not just afford a car, but a moronic Wankpanzer of the sort that's becoming especially popular, but it'd just sit outside my house slowly rusting.
I take public transport to work less than once a week, because it turns out I can get there faster by bike than by public t
Re:Good for drivers (Score:4, Informative)
I do this *all the time*. I take the bus back from the supermarket with a week's shopping with absolutely no problems.
And cargo bikes have been a thing forever.
Plus, because London is more human-friendly than most US cities, I have a local high street a short seven minute walk from my house, so it's dead easy to pop out and get anything I need during the week.
You guys have literally absolutely no capability of even imagining that your way of living isn't the only way of living, much less that some other ways might be better.
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I dunno how you do it....I barely have room most times in my CAR to carry everything back from a trip to Costco.
I mean...how do you do this on a bicycle...I'm having a gathering with friends. I'm firing up my offset wood burning smoker....I'm going 2 whole briskets, 2-3 racks of ribs, a pork shoulder (for pulled pork)......and then well, things
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I spotted someone with what looked for a good up bag for life with pannier clips so I asked her where she got it. I bought a couple too. I carry them around so I can stop at the supermarket on the way home and not have to ride around all the time with a full set of panniers. Very handy.
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this is nonsense
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What are you even babbling about?
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It absolutely is an advantage that misery pushers just never even think of. You can't start a company in a garage, when you don't _have_ a garage.
Re: Good for drivers (Score:2)
Unique advantage? Get educated.
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Go on, I'll wait. That should be a no-brainer, right? After all, Amsterdam with its bike lanes can't have a longer commute than Houston? Right?
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Houston
Quite hard to find what the average commute distance is. From this:
https://www.chron.com/news/hou... [chron.com]
"Using a standard six-mile commute, TomTom said that it takes 32 minutes and 50 seconds to drive that route at peak morning and evening trips in Houston."
Funnily enough my commute is about 35 minutes give or take, and is 7 miles, not 6. And I do it by bike. I think the takeaway is that Houstonians move or pick jobs to not have a drive that's too long.
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This is... bullshit?
When I lived in Britain I could walk to work. Literally, 3 minute commute. Because I could pick a flat close to work and live there. And yes, it was a large comfortable flat for one person.
That freedom is not available to the average American. Everyone has to drive, even those who can't afford to.
This is why places like New York and SF are so expensive to live in. Whatever the downsides of those places, the lack of a 45 minute in each direction car commute is a massive, massive, advantag
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When I lived in Britain I could walk to work. Literally, 3 minute commute.
A good way to flaunt your privilege, dude. Most people in London spend around 40 minutes to get to work. Of course, you might have lived in a small city.
That freedom is not available to the average American. Everyone has to drive, even those who can't afford to.
This freedom IS available for an average American.
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The only way to consistently argue against reality is to simply invent your own facts. What I've noticed is that once people get into that state they don't just carefully invent a few select facts to support their argument, they detach from reality and invent wild fantasies about even peripherally related things. Hence his babbling about 15sq meters.
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Bicycles are mostly recreation and not used during rain or snow
False.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And the Dutch are famous for cycling a lot come rain or shine. Turns out you can deal with such things as "rain" and "snow" with modern, high tech devices such as "a coat" or "gloves".
Most businesses don't have bike racks for visitors or employees. The few that do, shove them out of sight where parked bikes are exposed to the weather and vandals.
So the problem isn't recreation it's that people don't even gi