A good observation from previous threads: “Whenever utility cycling is discussed on the internet, suddenly everyone has to move their fridge 100 miles in the rain”
Suddenly, all the north Canadians who live with snow storms 24/7 appear to comment how all the world infrastructure has to adapt to their specific needs.
What’s ironic is my city, Montreal, is arguably the biggest cycling city in North America. Even in winter the bike lanes are filled with cyclists. Why? Turns out that all you need is good-quality bike infrastructure that you actually maintain in the winter and people will happily bike year-round.
Montréal : cycle year round.
Laval/Brossard/Kirkland/PET/Montréal Est/… : obviously it’s impossible to cycle at any time ever and we must always drive.
Apparently all Canadians live in remote cabins several hours away from the nearest town, based on the “how can I live without a car” replies I’ve gotten over the years.
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50 percent of canadians live below the 49th parallel. 90 percent live within 160 kms
(iirc) 20kmsof the border between canada and the usaCanada has roughly 40 million people.
*Longest undefended border in the world
*Canada has more fresh water than any other country and almost 9% of Canadian territory is water; Canada has at least 2 million and possibly over 3 million lakes - that is more than all other countries combined
Just some contextual information for anyone who isnt familiar with canada reading your comment. Not directed at the comment i replied to, just thought it might be useful
That 90% is within 100 miles of the border, not 20km. And keep in mind that border is one of the longest on the planet. Not that it’s a good reason to have cars (it takes days to drive between Toronto and Vancouver, I think a train would be a much better experience for something more efficient than a flight).
Thanks! wasnt sure about how close to the border will fix.
And because you mentioned the length of the border, ill also add another tidbit in the edit
And keep in mind that border is one of the longest on the planet.
Depending on how you count it can have infinite length
not necessarily infinite, length is quantized so when you get to planck length sized chunks you can declare a largest border length (at least, the planck length is the shortest distance we can measure)
This is way off topic, but I’m curious about the fresh water thing. Does that include frozen water, and how does Antarctica fit into that metric? I know Antarctica is a continent, but is it also a country? Is it multiple?
Edit: I return with knowledge!
Antarctica has no countries, but does have regions where certain other countries have “claimed”. Also the info is pretty dated (late 80’s I think), but there’s a large portion that is totally unclaimed land entirely. Fun fact: this is the only large land area on the planet that’s unclaimed by a country.
As for fresh water content: Antarctica holds about 70% of Earth’s fresh water as ice. As a scale reference: If that all melted, it would be enough to raise the planet’s sea levels by nearly 200 feet (~60 feet higher than the 2011 tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan).
Some day we are gonna answer a trivia question with this. Ill think of you when my turn comes.
Yes cottaging is an activity that most Canadians participate in. One of the benefits of having the most lakes of anywhere in the world.
21% of Canadians using a cottage annually means that every single Canadian must do every trip ever by car, obviously.
I’m sorry, do you expect the government to build a train to every cottage? Ridiculous /s
Not what I said, try arguing without putting words in people’s mouths.
I mean, I wasn’t even talking about cottaging, yet you insisted on bringing it into the conversation. You seem to want coverage for specific “edge cases” but I don’t think you’re open to any actual things that address those.
Solutions that cover a majority of use cases are better anyways. These edge cases are minor problems that aren’t relevant to the majority of transportation needs.
There’s a difference between “I have a cottage that I visit 2 times a year” and “I live in the middle of nowhere and can’t possibly survive without a car!!” that a disproportionate number of people claim.
Over 80% of Canadians live in urban areas, yet much more than 20% seem to think they live in such a rural environment that lowering car usage is impossible.
And then it depends on the context of the conversation. There are countless threads of naiive people arguing that we can get rid of all cars, and when they do, people bring up the edge cases.
Going to a cottage once a year still requires a car.
Going to a cottage once a year doesn’t require you own a car for the whole year.
In fact, if you only truly need a car a handful of times per year, it’s vastly cheaper and less hassle to just rent it
There are countless threads of naiive people arguing that we can get rid of all cars,
Okay, if you’re going to keep arguing that, it’s time for you to fucking cite some.
Go read the comments in any of the threads about the Waymo car being burned.
When I first kagied “cottaging”, I got anonymous gay sex. Then I figured it was a Canada thing and found, “taking vacations to remote cabins during the summer.” Please let me know if I have the wrong definition.
Our transportation system and an individual’s personal transport should not be designed around solely less than one percent of trips they take a year. This is why car rentals exist.
Ohhh, they weren’t talking about the sex in public toilets thing? That must be super embarassing when a Canadian visits the UK!
Sometimes it’s both of those things.
Our transportation system and an individual’s personal transport should not be designed around solely less than one percent of trips they take a year.
I’ve never claimed that, but the edge cases are important to consider when you’re trying to get people to give up their personal cars.
You’ll forgive my confusion since you replied to a comment describing a good reason to own a car that most people don’t have with a comment about a bad reason to own a car that many people have.
I say it’s bad because there are alternatives to every family having a car specifically for the rare weekend trips they take a year
It’s amazing how people think skiing is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, yet think biking in the cold is somehow impossible.
Skis are optimized to move efficiently on top of snow, while bicycle wheels are not.
This is one of the big reasons why good plowing is a key feature required for winter cycling in snowy climates. My city has been doing alright in this regard, and I’ve been able to continue cycling for some of my trips. Transit is so good here though that I use that over cycling while the weather is really bad.
Or snow compacting
Thats terrible argument. Find a better one if you want to help move people from thinking they need a car.
Making bad arguments for good causes does more harm than saying nothing at all.
All Canadiens live in the permafrost
The only thing you need to say back is “Oslo”
Its fucking ALL of non metro Canada dude, not just the North, and thanks for implying that we dont matter/dont exist. Transit infrastructure is NOT cost effective outside the Cities here, and we arent a country shy on taxes
Don’t need to worry about taxes, cities pay for them.
How do you expect cities to pay for things without tax money? Bus drivers, Road Workers, Repair People, etc. All gotta eat
City taxes pay for your suburbian lifestyle.
As someone who doesn’t have a license or a car, but does bike a lot - there will be solutions.
I order my groceries delivered. When I needed to get my old bed recycled, I asked the second hand store and they came and picked it up. They weren’t interested in the broken mattress for it (obviously), so I contacted a moving company and they had it recycled for $40.
Now I get that that cost might be hard to swallow for some, but keep in mind that I don’t pay for my car, its insurance, the fuel, or maintenance, and it took less than five minutes for me to be done with the entire thing. All I had to do was open my front door and two burly men came and picked it up for me. I didn’t even have to wait at the recycling station.
Those $40 paid for themselves.
It’s also worth noting that I do live in the frozen north (not Canada, further north), where we don’t see the sun for half the year. I see people biking year round.
Where I live it costs $40 to drop a mattress off for recycling, and almost anyone who will sell you a mattress will take the old one away for about $40
I actually asked IKEA if they would recycle the old bed, but sadly they stopped that during corona and there hasn’t been much demand for the service since so they just don’t offer that anymore.
Segue: I’d bought my previous bed from MIO. It was a continental, bought right at the start of corona because at the time companies had massive discounts since they were scared that people would stop spending during the pandemic. At the time it replaced my 15 year old bed that was really worn, and at 50% off (7k instead of 14, currency is SEK) I was like “wow, what a steal!”
Then the middle mattress broke after less than three years. Couldn’t figure out why I had such a big divot in the middle of the bed, but as it turns out the side had broken and as such the springs had all gotten misaligned.
Called them in September, three years and six months or so after purchase. Turns out that the bed had a 10 year warranty but the mattress only had 3.
So I had to buy a new bed, much cheaper (like 6K with the mattress), from IKEA, and their mattress has a TEN year warranty. It’s also much firmer and more supportive so I regret not just going with them in the first case.
Never buying shit from MIO again.
The psychology behind prices surrounding cars is outright evil. You don’t even notice how much you spend on them because everything is auto-deducted from your accounts (insurance, registration, etc.), gas is death by a thousand cuts, and repairs are seen as a necessity because it’s your transportation.
I’m well aware I’m saving money by not having a car. However, spending $40 on bike maintenance every few months feels so much more expensive than $400 on a car, even though the bike is my transportation.
Yeah, it depends on the context. Is the thread saying “we need to build out far more cycling infrastructure”? If so, no argument.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars? Then people start bringing up the edge cases that still require cars.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars?
You say that as if those threads are actually a common thing, and not just a strawman accusation from the fevered dreams of car-brains.
I mean, y’all literally call the place “fuck cars.” You call anyone that disagrees with you a “car-brain.” Not a lot of nuance.
As someone scrolling by from all, I’m actually surprised to see any acknowledgement that some people may need to rely on private automobiles.
Maybe y’all need to work on your messaging.
Messaging is for urbanist and transport subs, this is a place to bellow “fuck cars” until your voice is hoarse.
If you do want a serious discussion of posting here is just going to frustrate you and give you a very weird idea of the movement.
Go into a thread on autonomous cars and all you’ll hear is about how they’re useless and we don’t need them because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.
I have literally never seen that argument made.
Usually, what I see in those threads are a whole bunch of people arguing that autonomous cars would be some kind of silver-bullet panacea for traffic.
Frankly, what you wrote sounds like a strawman misinterpretation of an argument I myself make: I argue that autonomous cars are not a solution, but not “because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.” They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
Yeah, the only things autonomous cars might reduce are:
- Parking, but only if we forego our current private ownership model and everyone starts doing self-driving robo-taxis everywhere (unlikely)
- Road fatalities, but only if the self-driving tech proves statistically better than human drivers in a wide range of conditions (jury is still out)
It’s the same fundamental problem that electric cars have: geometry. Cars – even if electric and self-driving – are simply grossly inefficient at moving people for the amount of land they require:
The velomobile (electric or manual) is the most efficient transport in energy per mile. You could easily design something like a self driving podbike, maybe a little bigger, weighing maybe 100kg.
And self driving also allows for new configurations, e.g. two seats that face each other because you don’t need a steering wheel. That means much more narrow and aerodynamic “micro cars” that could solve a lot of edge cases for people who can’t drive or not that long or fast (50kmh / 30mph). They might compete with a big bus.
Except that the jury is not “still out” on number two, it is simply a matter of time, engineering, and training before they are statistically safer than humans.
Waymo’s cars are already safer than humans in their limited conditions.
I agree that they’re already statistically safer in limited conditions; the key part is when/if they will surpass in a wide range of conditions, including heavy snow or the disorganized and often unmarked roads of developing countries, for instance. For what it’s worth, however, I do think the tech will eventually get there.
Your failure to provide a reliable source for your claims is not my problem.
If you cannot provide a reliable source of your claims, your claim will be dismissed.
Congratulations that you haven’t, that’s evidently because youre not in there correcting people when they claim that autonomous cars aren’t a solution.
As long as cars are on the roads and humans are driving them they will continue to kill and maim people. Autonomous cars are the only remotely viable solution to that. They might not be fully ready for all situations yet, but they will be ready on the scale of a decade or two, whereas reorienting north American society to minimize human drivers (get everyone to move out of their homes in the suburbs and country) will take literally generations.
reorienting north American society to minimize human drivers (get everyone to move out of their homes in the suburbs and country) will take literally generations.
No, that’s defeatist bullshit.
It’s called risk analysis / wisdom / not planning exclusively for the best possible outcome in case the world doesn’t go exactly you as you hoped it would.
Your failure to provide a reliable source for your claims is not my problem.
If you cannot provide a reliable source of your claims, your claim will be dismissed.
You’d typically hear this in the context of Dutch-style city planning, where direct routes through cities are only available to cycles and buses, and only indirect routes are available to cars.
So cars and other vehicles such as ambulances, furniture-removal vans etc. can still drive to every house from the ring-road, but it is no longer convenient to get from one place to another within the same city by car (which is obviously the design, as it promotes cycling and bus use)
People who drive within the city and would be inconvenienced then suddenly discover a newfound interest in the rights of, for example, disabled people, as they search for counter-arguments.
They don’t let ambulances use the bus routes?
I’m sure the transponders needed to access/cross the city centre would be given to any city or emergency vehicles that needed them, same as the buses - the point was more that every residential address is still accessible by road for those special cases such as deliveries, garbage collection, trade vans, emergencies, etc., even when you block roads to prioritise transit and cycling
Emergency vehicles generally have unrestricted access as far as I know, which also makes car-restricted infrastructure far superior to regular car infrastructure, on account of not being congested by cars.
Can’t agree more.
Fact is that we can’t get rid of cars completely in our current society without billions in infrastructure changes, displacement and forced developments and regulations. Which unfortunately also means most roads are here to stay.
Can the number of trips and lanes come down- absolutely. New developments take mass transit and alternative travel into consideration- I hope so. Eliminate- no.
…and they’d have a much better time of it if there were less car traffic.
Those who depend on cars would benefit too when they are the only ones in cars
See, this is why I’m convinced that Americans secretly love traffic congestion. Why else would they do vehemently oppose anything that takes cars off of the streets and highways, and out of their way?
I’m not even sure that I’m joking, anymore. It’s important for humans to have rituals that symbolically bind us to a larger community, like eating a big meal (usually turkey) on Thanksgiving Day, right? It feels like drivers want everybody stuck in traffic jams, so that they can feel that their own frustrating commute has some greater meaning, like this is how it is, and we’re all in it together. (Like the weather.) Those of us who escape the matrix just enrage them by proving that their effort is meaningless and dumb.
Anyway, just a random musing.
They don’t understand the issue. Americans have been brainwashed for 80 years by the oil companies that car ownership is the epitome of freedom. Any policy that seeks to remove cars from the road is a policy that seeks to remove personal freedoms from their idiotic perspective.
Very astute observation! It makes a lot of sense to explain the rage at government policy changes, but I’m not sure that it entirely explains the rage at individuals just trying to exist on a bike on a street, even when we’re not in anybody’s way. There’s definitely a feeling that drivers want everybody else to drive, and not driving is a personal affront.
Yeah, there are definitely huge psychological and ideological factors going on here. Consider these two studies, showing the dichotomy between how cyclists are perceived by drivers and how they actually are:
https://www.bicycling.com/news/a26977798/dehumanization-of-cyclists-boosts-aggressive-drivers/
https://jalopnik.com/study-finds-cyclists-are-better-people-than-drivers-1850964103
I try to be ultra patient with cyclists, but a portion of them do indeed suck ass.
You can see them whenever you go for a stroll and almost get run over on the sidewalk, or at your nearest stoplight biking through the cross-walk like they’re a pedestrian.
I understand personally that cycling infrastructure would solve most of this stuff (some people are just assholes and would remain assholes), but it’s difficult enough for most people to see the things that are right in front of their faces already that I think asking them to imagine some future where cyclists aren’t annoying is way too high a bar.
Our local newspaper is a write in section. Each week about 30-40% of the space is dedicated to complaining about cars, roads, traffic, idiot drivers, parking, car theft, cost of fuel, or injuries/danger to pedestrians. Yet, when anyone suggests maybe building a bike lane or tram in this city there’s a massive groundswell against it (funded by realtors and trucking companies).
Fuck cars.
Yup. I love traffic. As an owner of a car I seek out traffic jams daily!
I always think to myself “what if I could be in a bus, and be subject to a restrictive schedule other than my own?” Naturally, I like to seat myself next to the gentleman eating the cat food.
Say this to anybody who will listen, please! I’ve been using it on my car guy friends, and they’re receiving it loud and clear. They love the idea of having the roads all to themselves, many of the actual enthusiast types do anyways.
This is basically how I like to put it:
I’m a car enthusiast. I own half a dozen cars. I genuinely enjoy driving.
You know what I don’t like? Traffic. And that’s why, when I’m doing mundane stuff like commuting or errands, I leave all my cars parked and get on my bike instead.
This right here is a big part of why I wholeheartedly support the message of this community. There are way too many people behind the wheel who have no business there, are frightfully inept as drivers, but they’ll tell you that they need a car. And they’re probably right. But with more walkable and bikeable cities and better transit, that excuse evaporates, and a drivers licence can be a privilege, and not a necessity.
For what it’s worth, I like my car. I like driving my car. I also drive a truck for a living. But god damn, I’d drive my car a whole lot less if I had better alternatives. My commute is 15 minutes by car or 1.5 hours by bus. The bridge I have to cross on my way to work is car only, no bikes or pedestrians. Working days that can push 14 hours, another three hours of commute by transit is a no go, and I literally can’t bike to work. I like driving, but I don’t want to have to drive.
Yes please, I love cars, I do orientation rallies, I don’t like to have to drive anywhere. Motorways are boring.
I drive trains. I need to use a car, I don’t like to sit in traffic after my shift, I want to get to the hotel/home asap.
I could survive without a car for my short commute but insanely enough having a shit econobox makes more sense financially than a cargo bike until it finally dies, I deduct loads from taxable income, can’t with a bike. I get to sit in a warm box and all my shit is behind me. A hefty cargo bike (enough for two pieces of cabin luggage, I leave for two days and take food with me) would be more than I paid for the car. Oh and I’m not scared of much but Friday/Saturday 3 AM on a bike on dark roads? Bleh.
(I live in France, not like the US but some of the urban planning bullshit is similar)
My sister can’t move her feet at the ankle. She’ll never drive unless we can afford a custom 50k car. She has a 3,000 dollar mobility scooter. We had to spend about a month mapping the city to figure out WHERE THE FUCK SHE COULD GET ON AND OFF THE SIDEWALK.
Edit: Let me elaborate further:
It was so bad, that if we didn’t think ahead, we would have to go back a half a mile. I’m not joking. You ever seen those roads between neighborhoods with no turn offs? Better make sure that side walk ends with a ramp, otherwise, you have to go ALL the way back. You also can’t lift the scooter, it’s over 100lb. If you’re reading this, please petition your town to add more ramps to the sidewalk.
My sister has to have every bone from her pelvis to her ankle broken, REGULARLY. They have to cut all of her muscles, stretch them, reconnect them, and then inject them with botox. They then set them in a cast. This is just so she can properly grow, due to cerebral paulsy. And then, just to rub dirt in the wound, we can’t even use the sidewalk properly. We’re surrounded by beautiful nature and trails. She doesn’t get to experience that. Please petition your towns to add more ramps to the sidewalk. I’ll get off my soap box.
We had to spend about a month mapping the city to figure out WHERE THE FUCK SHE COULD GET ON AND OFF THE SIDEWALK.
Wow. It even worse than my shithole.
Dude it gets worse. They installed decorative boulders on our sidewalk instead of adding ramps. The stones were SANDSTONE AND IMMEDIATELY ERODED.
It was pointless, got in the way, and cost tax payer money.
The boulders used to take up 1/3 of the walk way, so I’m happy they’re being weatherd.
Jesus christ who is in charge of this, lol. I’m so sorry. That sounds frustrating as hell, I really have no good words.
Just make it national law to follow an industry standard that includes ramps everywhere a intentional transition between roads or entrances to properties are.
Germany has DIN 18317 and DIN 18318 for that. DIN = Deutsche Industrie Norm (German industry standard)
Same with GOSTs here.
GOST = ГОСТ = (Меж)государственный Стандарт = (Inter)national Standard
Was just National Standard during USSR.
Wait you used both Latin and Cyrillic scripts to describe that.
Are they both used in former Soviet countries? Are the Cyrillic words phonetically closer to what GOST would sound like?
Are they both used in former Soviet countries?
I’m trying to understand your question. Latin and Cyrillic scripts? Depends on language. In Russian only Cyrillic. Polish I think uses Latin.
Are the Cyrillic words phonetically closer to what GOST would sound like?
GOST is transliteration of ГОСТ. International Standard is translation. Or Interstate Standard if “государство” is translated as state.
For a second, I thought you had quoted a different paragraph.
That’s the logical result of decades of car-centric policies.
Sidewalks with ramps on them are a technology that has existed for a very long time. The only reason they aren’t there, is because somebody didn’t want to pay for them. I’m not blaming cars. I’m blaming politicians that are lazy as fuck about actually helping their people. And to an extent, many of those people, for not recognizing this as an obvious issue and pushing for it to be fixed.
It never ceases to amaze me, as a child and care giver of a parent with physical disabilities, how much this world is designed with no regard for people. It’s incredible. Fuck city planners.
My mom had a similar issue in our town, though no where near as bad. Her wheelchair is quite a bit heavier, but we got a small folding ramp that we bungee to the back of her chair and take with us everywhere. Whenever we find somewhere that she can’t go because of a step of less than 12 inches/30cm we can use that. It it’s more than that, we just have to figure something else out or not go there. It’s not okay the way everything is designed. And it doesn’t make sense. Everyone, regardless of mobility, can use a ramp, not everyone can use a step. Why is it so hard to get the fucking ramp?
I am a healthy adult and I’m also continually enraged at the state of sidewalks in my area. When I walk my dog there are some routes I simply cannot take because the sidewalk just… ends. I think some lots extend all of the way to the street and it’s up to the property owner to put in sidewalks and many simply don’t. If I walk across their lawn to get to the next private sidewalk I get yelled at for messing up the grass that they spend “so much time and money” maintaining; fine, it’s your property and I’ll stay off, but what a waste of resources. Unless it’s a particularly quiet road, I shouldn’t have to walk in the street. The city-maintained sidewalks that do exist are a travesty: no curb cuts as you noted, tree roots that create huge steps, holes, and some have no curbs so people just drive on the sidewalk. The city doesn’t want to do anything about it because these are either privately “maintained” and they can’t, or it costs money and they don’t want to.
I do think that mobility scooters should come in off-road versions because I’ve never seen one. I don’t see why $3000 can’t buy something closer to an electric ATV with knobbly tires, full suspension, and a torquey motor that can mount curbs like a boss, but it’s a chair format and is limited to fast-walking speeds so that it isn’t a car. It’s probably a low-volume issue.
Probably don’t see any off road chairs because people often only have 1 chair and it has to stay tiny enough to get through a doorway.
damn lisa really needs to shorten those slides for her presentation and start doing the talking herself
Stonetoss edits manage to be funnier than the original comic even when they’re still mocking the left, that guy really has a talent for being obnoxious.
0 cars bad idea. Need less car, need more everything else.
Serious death by PowerPoint vibes
I know right. What are they teaching children at Springfield elementary?
A walkable city means everything is closer for everyone, so if you have mobility issues you can just use a slower, safer, more efficient vehicle like a scooter or a cart that still suits your needs since you don’t have to go as far as to need a car.
I think the part that is often lost on people who don’t live in large cities but have to visit them for doctors appointments and specialized shopping and whatnot is that in such a walkable city would involve parking once in a municipal lot then walking a shorter distance to what they’d currently have to walk when parking in every business’s private lot and move between parking lots
That’s why I always have a cart in my pocket for my handicapped wife. Just in case we have to go to the city to access resources not available elsewhere. /s
I am all for walkable, bikeable cities with good public transport. The next city, though, is just gutting accessability by car without doing the necessary changes to make it more accessible by other means.
Sounds easier to fit in your pocket than a 2 ton vehicle. Cars are only seen as convenient due to their ubiquity.
Yes, but with a car I could actually reach the city and get somewhere there. Using a golf cart or similar vehicle would require that those were available in the city, so I could get to the city by e.g. public transport, and continue the way in such a cart. Sadly, the public transport there is f-ed up, and there is no golf cart rental there, anyway.
I do support bike- and pedestrian friendly cities, but they have to actually work, and that’s were things simply fail.
People can only think in 100%s. They think it’s either 100% car, 100% transit, or 100% bike. So you have to tell them you want them all. Currently we have cars, we need to add transit and bikes.
I’ve heard it said that Houston’s annual transportation cost for total car-dependency is close to 20% of their budget.
NYC, which has the entire MTA plus a huge number of highways and still shocking amount of car dependency, is 10%.
Amsterdam with all of its trams and bike paths is closest to 4%.
Yet any resident of NYC or Houston will tell you it is fucking TERRIBLE driving in either of those cities. Meanwhile, Amsterdam is ranked one of the best cities for people who love to drive because its roads are maintained, safe, and aren’t congested.
It’s actually not possible to be 100% transit or 100% bike, outside of some weird Swiss vacation communities or Canadian island neighborhoods. But the more you invest in transit and bikeped, the more you address the actual cause of congestion and the more drivable your city gets. Even if you truly love and prefer driving, multimodal cities are still better. Downs-Thompson is inviolable.
Downs-Thompson is inviolable.
The simple truth that a lot of people don’t understand. Cars simply require too much space that you can never possibly meet all the latent demand for car trips within a city, as doing so would mean bulldozing the entire city in the process. The only way to meet latent demand for transit is via an array of vastly more space-efficient means, e.g., public transit, walking, and biking.
Cars simply require too much space that you can never possibly meet all the latent demand for car trips within a city, as doing so would mean bulldozing the entire city in the process.
1970s Houston: “hold my beer”
It’s actually not possible to be 100% transit or 100% bike, outside of some weird Swiss vacation communities or Canadian island neighborhoods.
You don’t even need the caveat. Even in weird Swiss vacation communities and Canadian island neighborhoods, the mode share of pedestrians is >0%.
It doesn’t help that so many people take “fuck cars” as literal and essentially demonize any car use. We’ll always need some “cars”, but let’s get that number nice and low.
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Heck yeah! Me and my GF I feel like are a good example of this.
I use an escooter because I work from home, and my favorite grocery stores and dr office are within a mile. I’m also about 3 miles from a train station that goes up and down utah valley, so I see no reason for a car. I uber once every other month like when I needed to get something large to the post office.
My GF is a CNA that does free lancing. So it’s not unusual for her to have to drive an hour to the middle of nowhere with a shift that ends/starts in the middle of the night. A car just makes sense for her.
But people like me using micromobility/public transit means there are less cars on the road, less cars taking up parking, and even reducing the price of cars.
A lot of people think of themselves as too good for public transportation.
Cause they live somewhere where public transit is treated as a last thought thing for “the poors”. When public transit is designed as a method of moving people, rather than a last thought, it gets much wider adoption. Because it’s freaking great to not have to drive.
In my first job i used to work for a property management company. The owner had her office in the lavish flat of her parents in an upper class area of the city. When the mother of her asked, how i make it to work and i answered by subway. Her answer was something like “I couldn’t do that. It is always so dirty.”
Fuck rich people.
Maybe mentioned subway does have cleaning issues? Because for example Moscow subway has issues cleaning entrances.
In some areas, public transit can also be dangerous, with robberies, assaults, stabbings, sexual harassment and sexual assaults frequently making the news. As someone who used to live in Chicago, I wouldn’t recommend anyone taking public transit at night there unless you absolutely have to.
Even in Butovo public transport isn’t as dangerous as you describe. But you describe USSA.
I tried making it more a part of my routine, because I had a bus stop in my neighborhood and the buses stopped charging a fare. I figure it was a good way to travel around town for free. The times weren’t great, but I was using it for little trips. One time a neighbor saw me waiting for the bus and called to make sure I was okay, that there wasn’t some weird emergency that meant I couldn’t drive… Yeah, no, just wanted to take public transit.
A few months later, they removed the bus stop by me. It’s 3/4 mile of steep hill away now, so I’m back in my car full time. Oh well, I tried.
It costs me about 25 minutes of parking to catch a bus to the city while reading, have my meeting and take my time, then pay for the bus back home with a grand total of around 7 minutes walking.
Nearly door to door chauffeur that is cheaper than driving myself. Who’s too good for that?
It’s not that I think I’m too good for public transport, I just absolutely hate being near other people, especially ones I don’t know. It’s enough to endure 8 hours of office work, I’d rather be a hobo than commute.
I do own a e-bike as well as an EV, but I can only cycle to work pretty much half of the year, because snow/slush/ice, and even during summer and autumn, I take the car on days I’m going somewhere else than home straight from work (shop, gf, friends).
Public transport with closed separate sitting “boxes” is what it would take for me.
There’s a little old lady near where I used to live who drives up and down the country roads in her government-provided electric wheelchair every day. Everyone knows her.
On the one hand I think, “you go, girl!” but on the other hand, I feel like her life would be a lot easier if this town were more walkable/bikeable. She can’t walk to ride a bike but what a great benefit it would be for her to live in a place like that.
You literally need a license to drive and be over legal age. Compared to that, everyone can cycle or use public transport.
So what you are saying is that we’ll still need car infrastructure?
I don’t see how it could ever go away completely unless we develop some kind of teleportation device. People will always need a way to haul cargo around. It could certainly be reduced though with better city planning for those commuting to work and appointments and such that only need what they can hold on their person.
I’d like that a lot better if the cargo isn’t going to block the view of what’s ahead.
A standard bakfiets puts the cargo lower and the rider higher, but they’re rarely this wide. There are some mail bikes like you’re describing, with cargo in the back. There are also bike trailers. I think this is primarily for moving plants. There are some micro trucks that can haul a pallet in the space of a bike lane.
I mean, the thing here is that the vast majority of use cases are already solved for with bikes, motorcycles, and occasionally microcars or micro trucks and the remaining cases make more sense to be centralized. Like, you go to IKEA here and you have them deliver things to your house because why wouldn’t you? One truck making a bunch of deliveries is more efficient than a bunch of cars driving empty to a warehouse and picking things up. If you need to move things, it makes more sense to pay movers when you need them then to pay €10-15k (or way more, it’s like $10k in the US) every year to have a car. It’s just cheaper to pay movers than to own a car for moving things. There isn’t really a use case for owning a car that makes sense if you have functional infrastructure.
Oh yeah, for sure. To clarify, I’m not saying, “this is a bad design, therefore let’s just keep using cars”. I’m saying, “this solution has some flaws that should be addressed before it’s presented as a replacement for some car use cases”.
Potholes could be dangerous for this vehicle because you might not have a great view of the road itself, but you might still be less likely to hit a child because you can see them easier than an empty truck or SUV.
I’ve long been saying that a
handicappeddisabled person placard[1] should be your permission to drive within city limits, and other than that, you stay out of downtown areas of any city in your car.There are various degrees at which we can service private cars. Massive parking structures ain’t it, taking over all public spaces with roads ain’t it. But a path for disabled people to reach their destination directly in a car or van seems reasonable and doable, and will still allow us to reclaim most of the public space and money we spend servicing cars now.
[1] This is the correct name for it. Honestly, my bad.
You don’t need full-sized cars for in-city accommodation.
Exactly, and I strongly suspect that most in-city accommodation can be done with neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs)
I’m a disabled person living in a city in the UK. We have a scheme that allows me to swap my disability benefits for a car or mobility scooter. The cars deemed suitable for disabled people using a collapsible wheelchair are “compact/small family cars” and that size is perfectly adequate.
My most recent car is a seat Leon - a self charging hybrid. The mobility scheme I mentioned is really pushing fully electric cars and I’d absolutely love one. But being disabled often means being poor and like many other disabled people I live in a rented flat. There’s no EV charging at my block of flats. There’s no EV charging in my local town. I cannot afford to move, I can barely afford to survive. There are just SO many obstacles that aren’t being addressed in the UK it’s beyond frustrating.
It depends on the city. Many american cities have so much suburban sprawl that you’re just not going to plan your way out of car dependency in our lifetime. The progress that can be made in these areas right now is zoning to break up the massive single use neighborhoods.
Edit: “full size” could mean a couple of things. Mall crawlers and pickups are ridiculous here. Sedans, hatchbacks, and even crossovers make sense here, depending on your individual lifestyle and needs.
If you start building out transit before you can use it effectively, it can help guide the buildout. You can not only zone for many concentrations of buildings but commit to an incentive to encourage people to live there. “I want to move into this apartment building because it is a nice walkable area of shops, parks, restaurants plus they’re building a train station”
I don’t disagree, but building transit for hypothetical use decades down the line is expensive and very unlikely to happen.
To be clear, I’m talking about places like where I live, i.e. no businesses at all for several miles in any direction. We need corner stores, neighborhood bars and restaurants, and retail space so people want to get somewhere that isn’t miles and miles away.
Yeah I’m probably spoiled by some recent projects in Boston where I live.
- for many years there was an industrial wasteland in the fan pier area that was underdeveloped and the industry had long since moved away. It was great cheap parking if you didn’t value your car. However the city spent years developing a master plan to connect the area with transit, funded a convention center, a courthouse, and brought in developers. In only a couple years, it went from a disconnected abandoned wasteland to an easy transit ride to convention center, hotels, entertainment, courthouse, many businesses, and is arguably one of the city’s hot spots. Good riddance to all the cheap parking.
- new development are around was it Harvard or BU hinged on a new train station and agreement with the college for immediate development
- a couple decades adding a new subway line. Granted the areas served already had lots of people, but building the stops was eventually followed by transit oriented development
That is simply untrue. Change can happen quite quickly if people care.
That level of change is rebuilding the entire surburb to be more dense. There isn’t the building capacity to do this to all of them , even if by some miracle you found the money.
You can’t make a bus route work when the area it’s travelling through is so spread out, it has to stop too much and drive for too long and costs more than it can make in fares.
If you want to change America then good luck, but it’ll be your grandchildren that get the benefit should you succeed.
deleted by creator
I in no way implied you did. My comment is an important note for others.
I agree with your point as a disabled person - and here in the UK we kinda have this system. My car is registered disabled and therefore I can drive into LEZ, ULEZ and CC areas for free automatically. It’s a literal life saver when I survive off benefits, physically cannot use public transport, but I’m treated at hospitals in the very centre of London.
But the term “handicapped” is outdated and is considered offensive by some. Perhaps stick to “disabled people” instead.
Honestly should have checked myself before I wrote it out like that. Feel like I already knew this. In any case, fixed.
We all make slip ups, it’s all good 👍🏼
I remember getting into this with my wife. She is into buses and those were black magic, I liked the subways. Took a few bus rides with her and she converted me. Both are great options with pros and cons.
I like the bus better to. More comfortable and fast then the subway every time.
Whre on the world are buses faster that the subway?
Places where subways don’t have as many stops, or cities that have better bus infrastructure and/or funding, likely (example: bus has more funding and as a result, you might only have to wait a couple minutes at a bus stop compared to 10+ at a subway).
Could be off base, but that seems likely enough.
Any examples?
No, because I was just spitballing plausible answers. I tried to make that pretty clear.
tiny electric cars you can drive onto trains and boats
Floating chair based transportation is the future
Sign me up
That was the exact thing that come to my mind, thanks
A much better idea than some teslas in a short tunnel.
That’s basically what the new scooters and unicycles are, though sometimes I worry about their safety compared to bikes.
My ebike was basically a mobility aid for me and I didn’t even realise fully at the time.
I have a congenial hip deformity that made walking as a kid challenging, it was worsened by an autoimmune condition and in my late teens I slowly lost the ability to walk. By 22 I was a full time forearm crutches user, and at 23 a part time wheelchair user.
I was 100% reliant on accessible public transport to do anything. I could occasionally afford a taxi, but it was a rare occasion. It made finding work really difficult. When I was 24 I had surgery to remove a bunch of adhesions and scar tissue among some other things, and afterwards started an intensive two year physical therapy rehab program.
It got to the point where I could walk about 500m without any aid, and I could cycle about 1km on a standard bike. It was a huge increase to me previous range of zero, and it included the local shops and a second bus stop with additional routes so I was wrapped.
But then I got an ebike, and suddenly my range went from 1.5km to 21.5km, I could lazily pedal 20km and let the motor take me, though in reality I can turn the motor down and lazily ride 30-40km.
Over time, this lazy riding in addition to my PT meant I was working harder without feeling like I was, my walking range was growing too because my leg strength and my endurance was growing from lazily cycling so much. Suddenly I was doing 20,000 steps a day in addition to a casual 15km ride to work. Last year I set a goal to jog for 10 minutes, and nailed it before June, setting myself the goal of a 5km by Christmas, I went over, but ran my first ever 5km on January 4th. Having never ran before, not even as a child.
All thanks to my ebike.
Which I could only use because I have semi decent bike infrastructure in my area, and ebikes are legal.
To add to this, one time when I visited a German town, the tour guide, a somewhat elderly guy, chose to walk his bike everywhere he went - odd choice, but he said it was useful for him to have something to lean on when he’s not riding.
Make me a climate controlled hyper-efficient one seat vehicle thats safe and I’d be so there.
Where I live, only the enthusiasts and the ones who live really close to work only have like 40 non-contiguous days a year that they can reasonably commute in anything but a car without showing up soaked with rain, sweat, or frozen boogers.
I’d love to give up my car. I work from home. I legit only need it two days a week to pick up my kid from preschool. Even when I commuted I hated that I had to take 4 empty seats and 3000 pounds with me.
Even to take the train (whose schedule is now completely incompatible with anybody’s work schedule unless they work within walking distance of a train stop thanks to a wildly underfunded subway/bus/streetcar infrastructure), I still have to drive that pile of metal to the train station, and that’s too far to reasonably walk, and too dark to safely bike thanks to poorly lit winding roads and non-existent bike lanes.
The whole system is fucked, but even scooters and unicycles aren’t filling that niche. And they won’t until they can at least protect you from the elements in some capacity, and provide some modicum of safety against every idiot with a drivers license and a pavement princess they can’t see past the hood on.
You did kind of cite the actual issue, the one we want to fix, right in your complaint. A well-funded subway/bus infrastructure tends to suit most people’s needs, such that the short trip to take one of these dinky ebikes/e-unicycles to the train station (or, taking a frequent bus on its route) would rarely be so uncomfortable. The key here is that climate-controlling an individualized vehicle is going to be inefficient no matter what.
The environment will always be a potential concern. If you live in a rainy area, but vacuum-seal yourself into your hamster ball before heading to work, you’ll still need an umbrella after depositing your hamster ball into the Ball Collective before going into the office building. From my point of view, it seems like you’re pushing the “problems” into the wrong domain of concern, and also kind of pretending cars solve that issue 100% - which they don’t.
I’ll give up climate control as long as there’s decent protection from wind and rain and some level of safety.
Carrying an umbrella for a walk a couple of blocks is no big deal. Carrying an umbrella for 10 miles while traveling 15MPH is a bit much. Especially when you’re traveling against frigid winds.
And safety. Until cars are out of the picture almost entirely, any two-wheeled vehicle that has to share space with them is almost entirely out of the picture.
Yeah, in case it’s not clear, I’m definitely not suggesting carrying an umbrella in one hand on a bike; or sharing a 4-lane road with Son Unaliving Vehicles.
Rainy days would basically be when a bus is a better option, if not a straight walk to a train station.
And that’s what I’m getting at.
New York (outside of NYC)/New England is a tough place for giving up a car. Our housing just isn’t dense enough to support a decent public infrastructure.
Now, granted, my office is a good 30 miles as the crow flies from my house. I took that job because pay is sooo much better in Boston. And I took the train…for a while. Until my wife was in her third trimester, and I needed to be able to leave at the drop of a hat. And then Covid happened. And then the train schedules went to shit, and the Red and Green lines collapsed behind them (though they weren’t in terrific shape to begin with).
But if I wanted to solely take public transit into work, I’ve gotta leave my house at around 4am to walk about four miles to a bus, that drops me off at the train station 2 minutes after the inbound train leaves. So then sit at the train station for an hour until the next train. Then ride the train for an hour. Then hope to get on the first subway car, that’s now packed like a sardine can and paced out 15 minutes apart. Then walk a few more blocks.
And then repeat it, except the last bus back towards home just left 2 minutes before the train arrived. So now it’s more like 7 miles to get back home on foot or bike.
Cities are great, but if we think housing is expensive now, just wait until everyone has to be within 5 miles of where they work. I’m not an exception in traveling in to Boston from practically the RI border. Lots of people I work with commute in from NH.
Hell, my boss just moved to NH. He used to live near southern terminus of the red line, the subway that gets within a couple blocks of our office. His commute from New-fucking-Hampshire is almost as long.
Requiring CDLs for these huge monstrosities would finally put pressure on automakers to return to more reasonable car bodies and it would make sure that people who have to drive big vehicles at least are qualified to do so. Traffic tickets should also scale with the size of the vehicle since a speeding Range Rover presents different risks to the public than a speeding Smart Car.
Real investment in walkable cities and suburbs is the harder solution but the better one. If you could walk your kid to preschool that eliminates a car trip. Walking exposes you to the elements, but walking speed doesn’t amplify rain, cold, or heat like biking does. Zoning laws should allow a preschool, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a community space, and a hardware store to exist within easy walking distance for you. Bike paths should connect you to the next community. Miles of uninterrupted residential-only zoning is choking our planet.
Some people do “need” their pickups for recreation, but they’re almost all GHG emitters…towing boats, carrying ATVs/dirtbikes, etc. Campers are another thing, not so bad but I wouldn’t call those glampers anything close to camping.
But then these giant pickups become their daily drivers, and because of that they’re ubiquitous. And because of that, people who have absolutely no legitimate reason for driving a pickup truck or other huge vehicle, end up buying one to feel safe.
And in a way they are right. It’s insane how many people look at me like I’m trying to kill them for backing out of a space real slow. No, there is a giant iron fucking curtain that’s blocking my view of you and any other cross traffic. That’s why I turned on my backup lights and waited a few seconds before inching out. Not because I’m an idiot or I’m trying to kill you, but because I have absolutely no other option than to blindly back out of the space.
Safety is definitely the tough part, and would probably require a new innovation in safety tech.
Maybe if you could find a way to create incredible traction between the tires and the road in emergencies you could stop faster and offset the G force when someone crashes into you.
Exterior airbags are also an option - basically just deploying a tire sized thick rubber balloon the instant before a collision, from both vehicles.
Or if the car is light enough, maybe it could jump.
Or like that table saw that stops when it hits flesh , you could have a break bar shoot down out of the bottom of the vehicle to jam into the road. Youd damage the asphalt but better some chunk of asphalt than a persons life.
Maybe the real one-size-fits-all solution is the car-dependent city planning we made along the way
/s
“Not everyone can walk or cycle”
The only response needed for that statement is the following video.
Nothing in that video matches your claim. It shows disabled and elderly people can benefit from walkable cities and non-car-centric road planning, just like everyone else can. But I, like many others, CANNOT walk, cycle or use public transport, no matter how inviting the infrastructure or how much I dislike cars.
Could I use a mobility scooter? Sure! But not in the cold and wet and not when I can’t afford one. I could use it in addition to my car to get out on nice days or for short journeys to my local town but not instead of. And what am I meant to do when I get to the shops or cafe or whatever? Mobility scooters don’t fit in shops/cafes/restaurants unless they’re new buildings, which in the UK they’re invariably not.
Insisting that everyone can just use alternative means of transportation is untrue and unhelpful to the cause. A small percentage of people will always need cars, just like we’ll always need ambulances. Let’s focus on the abled bodied people who don’t actually need to be driving instead of blindly insisting that everyone is the same and one solution fits all.
Nothing in that video matches your claim.
What is my claim? I sure as heck responded to a claim. But what is my claim? Take your time and think about it please.
But I, like many others, CANNOT walk, cycle or use public transport, no matter how inviting the infrastructure or how much dislike cars.
Watch from 1:25 mark.
Don’t be an arse. There’s absolutely no need to be so condescending.
Honestly, the only condescending one in this exchange was you.
Sincerely, a 3rd party observer
Don’t go on the internet calling people ableist, and then claim that other people are being condescending. You’re the condescending one. You got all hung up on the way someone said one thing, and then wrote an entire novel in response, basically pointing out that you somehow have no idea what you’re arguing over.
The only real argument you seem to have made, was that it’s difficult for you to get in and out of buildings that weren’t built more recently. And that has absolutely nothing to do with the argument that is going on right now. It’s a problem, yeah… But not at all what we’re talking about.
Nobody who you replied to is saying that we should get rid of cars. And the only way your arguments make any sense to me, is if I assume that you think that’s what would happen. As a car fanatic who enjoys working on vehicles, I don’t enjoy the car hate. But I very rarely see people say that we should straight up get rid of all cars. They just seem to want more people to take public transit. There are some people who seem to demonize cars entirely, and to those people I say, CHILL. We got to this point because cars seemed like the answer to all our transportation needs. And for a long time, we were right. You don’t have to be so hateful about the way things are, when talking about how they can be better. Your attitude isn’t convincing any of the old people that hold all the power. You seem like upset children to them, and everyone you’re trying to convince, because you behave like one when you say things like “Cars are ruining our society”. No. Lobbyists that make sure the agenda doesn’t change to anything actually helpful, are what’s ruining our society. Though, I can’t speak for anyone outside of America.
But I, like many others, CANNOT walk, cycle or use public transport, no matter how inviting the infrastructure or how much I dislike cars.
Not sure why you couldn’t use multi-modal transport with a scooter and public transport? Not all public transport is accessible, but accessibility can and should be part of the focus of building/improving public transit.
Could I use a mobility scooter? Sure! But not in the cold and wet
I’m not sure why you couldn’t use a mobility scooter in weather? I occasionally see some in Canada which are enclosed and temperature controlled. In the Netherlands, they have microcars which are an even better option for people with disabilities than a full-sized modified vehicle.
… and not when I can’t afford one.
Yet you can afford a car? Not only are mobility scooters usually cheaper than much bigger, more complex cars, but they are also subsidized (rightfully so) by medicare/health-plans.
Mobility scooters don’t fit in shops/cafes/restaurants unless they’re new buildings, which in the UK they’re invariably not.
Neither do full-sized vehicles/bikes/transit, so your point is moot. However, the smaller size of mobility scooters makes it easier to accommodate closer handicap parking than full-sized cars.
A small percentage of people will always need cars, just like we’ll always need ambulances.
Ironically, there’s an argument that ambulances are public transit. They might be inefficient public transport, but they are an alternate to individuals driving dangerously to try and get medical help ASAP.
I think overall, your view of active transportation is really limited. Of course cars aren’t going away but all your arguments seem to be limited by your experience of motonormativity.
I’m mainly bed bound. I cannot maintain my blood pressure when upright, even when sitting, I faint regularly unless prone. I still have to go to the hospital and doctors regularly however - that is in fact the only place I do go, excluding visiting my dying mum 100 miles away.
I’m on chemotherapy - I’m immunosuppressed and very vulnerable to infection. I’m also prone to chest infections and have to keep warm. I have cold urticaria - I’m literally allergic to the cold. I have severe Raynaud’s disease - again I have to stay warm. I have severe arthritis, the cold makes this much more painful and restricts my pitiful mobility further.
Nice assumption, but no I can’t afford a car either. I swap in my disability benefit in for a car on the “motability scheme”. It leaves me with a whopping £100 a week to live off of. I could have an electric scooter instead but I have nowhere to store it and it’s not suitable for someone so vulnerable to the cold. My car is a self charging hybrid. I would love an electric car but I rent a flat - there’s nowhere to charge it.
My point is not moot, because manual wheelchairs can fit into the majority of places. I cannot just walk in when I arrive, I need my wheelchair.
We only have the one compact/small family car for our household, plus my manual wheelchair. Getting an electric scooter wouldn’t, couldn’t replace the car so getting one (with some hypothetical money) would be even worse for the environment.
I don’t actually live in a “motornormative” culture. I grew up in London and live in Birmingham. There’s trains, buses, trams, electric scooters and the tube, which the vast majority of people I know use over cars. Your questions (and assumptions) are pretty ableist tbh, and all I’m trying by to point out that disabled people aren’t the enemy. “Not everyone can walk or cycle” is a true statement. Let’s focus on the people that can walk and cycle instead of the small minority of us already penalised by society for having the misfortune to be sick or disabled.
Your original comment compared full-sized standard vehicles to mobility scooters. No where did you mention (and still haven’t clarified) how you get around having to be prone at all times. No, it’s not “ableist” to take what you say at face value.
Nice assumption, but no I can’t afford a car either. I swap in my disability benefit in for a car on the “motability scheme”. It leaves me with a whopping £100 a week to live off of. I could have an electric scooter instead but I have nowhere to store it and it’s not suitable for someone so vulnerable to the cold. My car is a self charging hybrid. I would love an electric car but I rent a flat - there’s nowhere to charge it.
This all is based on “what is” not “what can be”. I too live in the real world where I still share a car with my spouse, but I also advocate for the future I want to see, where we can rent/carshare a few times a year. This conversation is not about the status quo, but the potential of our communities.
If you were provided an accessible flat with a place to store a mobility device, less of your income would go towards transportation.
My point is not moot, because manual wheelchairs can fit into the majority of places. I cannot just walk in when I arrive, I need my wheelchair.
So you ignored my link about microcars. The video shows one with the seat removed and a ramp to allow a wheelchair to be ridden straight in and out (here’s it queued up for you).
Let’s focus on the people that can walk and cycle instead of the small minority of us already penalised by society for having the misfortune to be sick or disabled.
You’re reduced to “£100 a week to live off of” because of cars. Urbanists don’t want to penalize you for having the misfortune to be sick or disabled, they want to enable mobility for all, including the elderly and disabled. You’re just too stuck in car-brained thinking (and while it’s not the US, London and Birmingham are exceptionally motornormative).
![[meme] There is no one-size-fits-all solution to transportation](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0bfe1df9-1b6b-414f-88b3-4e7d57514682.webp){kind=link}