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The Rules of the Road are Baloney

January 2, 2017 by Bernhard

I’m going to start with the assumption that, at one time and place or another, people who bike have been chastised by people who drive for not “following the rules of the road.” I have seen and heard this grievance aired frequently. It has often been presented as an argument against increased bicycle infrastructure. It goes something like this: If cyclists want the “privilege” of using space “designed for” cars, then they must earn it by adhering strictly to the […]

Categories: Bicycles, Ethics, Philosophy, Transportation • Tags: cars, rules of the road

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The Latest Front in the “War on Cars”

August 3, 2016 by Bernhard

If you live around Bloor Street in Toronto you might have noticed something remarkable today: the commencement of the installation of bike lanes on Bloor. I hope it not too hyperbolic to say that this is a momentous occasion, and as such, I should probably write a positive and optimistic piece. But instead I’m going to sully this event by using it as a platform to address an issue that I am confident that will emerge (or has already, I […]

Categories: Bicycles, Ethics, Transportation

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Bikes Lanes on Bloor and the Suburbs: On Dependency and Freedom from Cars

May 6, 2016 by Bernhard

Those of you who don’t live in Toronto are unaware, but a previously unfathomable thing came to pass on Wednesday. Toronto City Council voted in favour of a pilot project for bike lanes on one of Toronto’s major (if not the major) thoroughfares, Bloor Street. The rallying call of “Bike Lanes on Bloor” from cyclists over the last decade always struck me as mostly symbolic, if not a bit tongue-in-cheek. In car-centric Toronto, it just never seemed possible, no matter […]

Categories: Bicycles, Toronto, Transportation • Tags: bike lanes, suburbia, suburbs, Toronto

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The Conference Board of Canada Greatly Overestimates the Degree to which Drivers Cover Road Costs

November 19, 2013 by Bernhard

Recently the Conference Board of Canada released a study that claims that upwards to 90% of Ontario road costs are covered by drivers. The purported findings of the study were gleefully touted by all major news sources, and if one was careless enough to read appending user-comments, one could expect that they were rife with remarks of smug self-satisfaction and entitlement, and perhaps claims of moral superiority in the horrific “war on cars.” I was immediately sceptical of the findings […]

Categories: Economy, Transportation • Tags: cars, Conference Board of Canada, road costs, transportation

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The Publicly-Funded Convenience of Cars

September 27, 2013 by Bernhard

Like most issues, people engage with transportation mainly in an individualistic way. Hence most “debate” about transportation infrastructure, as in this predictable piece, merely amounts to recounting a set of personal anecdotes such as seeing cyclists riding on sidewalks, without extrapolating any broader insights beyond expressing one’s peevishness. Maybe this is just systemic – people are “inherently” selfish (or encouraged to be so), and have great difficulty considering some issue beyond their immediately personal wants and experiences – say on a […]

Categories: Environment, Politics, Toronto, Transportation • Tags: cars, cycling, public transit, transportation infrastructure

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