Are we using derechos and tornadoes as excuses for car dependence? Well, that's something new if nothing else.

There are dozens and dozens of cities, big medium and even small, all over Europe, which have some combination of sub-zero temperatures, regular 100+ degree temperatures, lots of snow, lots of rain, lots of hills, and every other imaginable geography-related carbrains excuse in existence in North America. They bike, walk and take transit all the same. All bullshit excuses, all demonstrably so. The reason North America is car dependent is by conscious choice and by design, and absolutely nothing else whatsoever.

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esseph 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

US is very big. Lots of places to go. Need a car to get around, can't fly everywhere. Trains don't go everywhere, because it doesn't make economic sense. Hm. Stuck with cars.

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kspacewalk2 5 hours ago | parent [-]

US has tons of very dense areas with lots of places that can be easily reached by modern public transit, should political priorities ever change. Trains don't go everywhere because of a conscious, deliberate and top-down (centrally planned) choice to invest in car infrastructure. Trains of course used to go everywhere in North America, and were economically viable just fine, until cars were artificially made more economically viable. Stuck with cars due to conscious choices of past generations, unsuccessfully looking for external excuses ever since.

	▲	esseph an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There are 19,500 incorporated towns in the United States. 76% of those have less than 5,000 people.

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gamblor956 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are dozens and dozens of cities, big medium and even small, all over Europe, which have some combination of sub-zero temperatures, regular 100+ degree temperatures

Name even one. You won't be able to, because unless the Atlantic currents change, the European climate simply doesn't have the same extremes as the U.S. does. To put it bluntly: if any European city had extremes from sub-zero to plus-100 on a regular basis, it would be global news. OTOH, Most of the U.S. Northeast and Midwest experiences this every year.

You're also overstating the degree to which people walk in Europe, by a lot. Yes, people walk and take public transit. But that's because they can't afford a car. And their economic counterparts in the U.S. similarly bike, walk, or take public transit.

	▲	kspacewalk2 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Madrid has heat waves like Toronto has never seen, Oulu has tons of snowy winters that would cause Toronto to Call In The Army (Torontonians will get the reference), Porto and Lisbon have lots of hills, etc. etc. All these cities have modern, 21st century, first-world public transit appropriate for their size. They have sidewalks that don't make people not currently inside a car feel like second-class citizens. They have cycling infrastructure and they even maintain it in winter! Toronto, and essentially all other big North American cities, don't have these things, or are currently making baby steps toward getting them. (Even NY's system is neglected for decades and simply riding on the coattails of past decisions made when the city was run by adults). What possible difference does it make that Toronto might have both weather extremes if there are so many examples of better-designed and better-run cities successfully dealing with any of them? Just intellectually lazy excuses. >Yes, people walk and take public transit. But that's because they can't afford a car. No, they very often do it by choice. You'd see people making that choice in the US too, but they can't. Their choice is car or stay the fuck home. Millions of Americans also can't afford a car, but they buy one anyway because they can't get to work in any other way. They are forced to pay through the nose (relative to their income) for one, whereas in Europe they'd be far more likely to have a viable public transit option. By viable I mean frequent, convenient and comfortable. There are probably a dozen such systems in North America, if not fewer, and even those systems don't reach most of the population of their city. NY, Montreal and Toronto are the partial exceptions, and Toronto only because of the best bus system in North America. >And their economic counterparts in the U.S. similarly bike, walk, or take public transit. You'd need a moderate to severe death wish to routinely walk or bike outside your little bubble of a subdivision in the majority of North American suburbs. Much worse in the US, but true of Canada as well. Downtowns are every bit as bad. As soon as you hit a stroad [0], you start re-evaluating your life choices. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad