Here's a comparison of Toronto and a handful of random not-Southern European cities that came to mind. For interest's sake, all these are far north of Toronto, which is in line with Marseille!

https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/19863~75981~45062~47913~5...

Toronto is up there in summer, and lowest in winter, and at high humidity. Add in high winds coming in over an icy Lake Ontario and I'd rather buy my groceries fully indoors.

I agree about the lack of snow, but there's still just enough to make that brown slush, which is worse for walking in.

My original point - perhaps overly aggressively stated - comes down to this: the people who vote and pay taxes also like their cars, and this is OK. Building a pedestrian tunnel in Toronto should be very uncontroversial. Infrastructure decisions have to be made, and there are many upsides to widespread car ownership.

- no crazies yelling at you, or at least not within stabbing range of you

- you pick your soundscape

- you pick your temperature

- lower average transit time (I don't have a stat for this one, but I started off taking the TTC (Toronto Transit) and then bought a car. Despite heavy traffic, my travel time literally halved.

- suddenly big box stores like Costco make more sense, which makes the entire economy more efficient

Of course there are downsides. But everything is a tradeoff.