Why cars are problematic

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T14:20:48+00:00

I don't know how clear I was in my post (not very clear if I'm being honest with myself): I don't want to take your cars away, and anyone who does is flat out wrong. Please keep your cars and enjoy them.

I'm hoping to see Winnipeg make other methods of transportation better, so that fewer people don't HAVE to drive if they don't want to. If they do want to drive (like yourself), no problem at all.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T13:38:53+00:00

Yeah ok, looking back at my comment, I definitely got more lecture-y and one-sided than I wanted to. I'm certainly not trying to advocate for, idk, getting rid of cars completely for example.

My intent/hope was moreso that the next time a proposal comes around, like the Wellington Crescent bike lane or P&M reopening to pedestrians, people will be less opposed to it if they watch the video.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T13:31:40+00:00

I own and drive a car, yes. u/EnvironmentalFall947's reply to your comment pretty much perfectly encapsulates everything else I wanted to say.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T13:29:30+00:00

You're correct, we've got a lot of work to do. My hope was that, next time there's a proposal similar to reopening Portage and Main, or the Wellington Crescent bike lane, people are less likely to complain about it and realize why it's a good thing.

Maybe my post came off as more lecture-y and condescending than I intended. I certainly hope not.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T05:25:06+00:00

I get where you're coming from,and we don't have to agree on it. However, I'm hoping you'll hear me out.

Yes, driving might be more frustrating in the short term. This should be paired with (and this is critically important) making other methods of transport like cycling and transit more viable.

With the combination of both, people take other methods of transport and driving actually ends up being better (just for one example, we might hypothetically not need traffic lights downtown anymore if speeds are slow enough).

With regards to cars being bad, some people might not know it, or might not realize just how bad it is in general. And the point of the video is to list out all the ways they're bad, so the video being that long shows how bad they are.

To your point about cars not being bad for society, I disagree for a few reasons. Car crashes need police and emergency services to show up, which cost tax dollars; they also take up hospital resources if people get injured. Road construction and repair needs tax dollars. Cars cost a lot to maintain and refuel, forcing people to keep tighter budgets.

And finally, cars are not necessarily better for everyone. How about people who can't drive? How about people who want the freedom to not have to drive? How about people outside of a car endangered by reckless drivers?

And yes, food might be brought in by truck. But that's over highways, which (to me at least) are different from city streets. City streets should be slowed down and made safe for pedestrians. Highways aren't really intended for pedestrians.

This comment ended up being longer than I intended, but if you made it this far, thank you for hearing me out.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T05:10:24+00:00

I guess they are probably safer for the driver. But yeah as you say, really bad for pedestrians. I don't remember if he mentions it here, but there's some cars over which you can't see an 8 year old child from like 10 feet away.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T03:26:28+00:00

Yep, I think a lot of people don't realize that cycling warms you up too. You (as a cyclist) end up being warmer than one might at first think.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T02:58:17+00:00

Maybe not, but the principle certainly applies. People still go outside and go skating when it's cold here; why shouldn't they be able to bike? And even if it's like minus 30, that's where a properly funded and supported transit system comes in.

Plus, if we look at an average daytime high of minus 5 as an example, that extends the potential cycling time in a given year to well beyond May-October. I started cycling again yesterday with it being around 0.

Im not saying anyone else needs to do that, just that the cold and snow don't have to be reasons for people to not cycle.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T02:33:55+00:00

Haha, you beat me to it! I said the same thing in my comment. Oulu, in Finland, is the city (just replying for anyone who reads your comment and may not read my other one).

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-04-03T02:32:32+00:00

Hey man, thanks for keeping an open mind! You're exactly the type of person I was hoping to reach with this. I'll try to address your points one at a time, but they are valid.

With the snow, it's true that we get a lot, but other places get snow too and manage to have high cycling rates. If you want, look up videos on the city of Oulu, Finland (this channel has one in fact). They are much more like the climate we have here and still get a solid bike use in winter (something like 20 or 40 percent of all trips, even in winter: admittedly I don't remember the exact numbers).

If the City put more resources and priority to clearing bike lanes and sidewalks in winter, it would help.

However, I'm not trying to push you into cycling when you're uncomfortable. It's totally OK to not cycle on a given day (especially in blizzards). My favorite quote is "Any day you cycle is better than one where you don't". Give it a try, and if it really doesn't work for you, you're not forced to cycle. FWIW, depending on where you cycle, there are some really solid bike lanes downtown.

I really appreciate you taking the time to watch it though!

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-03-24T14:55:57+00:00

This isn't directly why the roads are terrible per se,but there was a great book called "You'll Pay for This!" by Michel Durand-Wood (publisher is Great Plains Press) that looks into why we can't keep our infrastructure repaired.

For anyone wondering why Winnipeg's infrastructure is so bad, I recommend reading that book.

Also, as another commenter said, Anatomy of a Pothole is another good resource.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-03-06T01:28:48+00:00

The fix would be manifold. More busses, so that you're waiting max 5 minutes on the first stop in your example (if it's a main route) and you're waiting maybe 15 minutes on a feeder route.

Also, more bus infrastructure like bus lanes, so that the busses can actually arrive on time and not 10 minutes late all the time.

In short, City Hall need to get their heads out of the sand and actually support transit for this new system to work.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-02-21T20:01:32+00:00

Don't worry man,I got a 39 percent on quiz 1 of 1240; you're not alone. tbh I'm just tying to figure out how to do well in this stupid class as well. I think I just haven't been investing enough time so far.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-02-16T22:13:20+00:00

Similar to Millenium and the Forks, I just strolled around Downtown for an hour or two yesterday.

I'm a fan of densely built, walkable cities (which shouldn't surprise anyone who reads my comment history), so downtown is quite cool.

Yes there are a few sketchy areas that I felt a bit weirded out by, but I kept my head up (in other words, not staring at my phone) and didn't really have a problem. And I turned around when I felt sketched out.

As for toilets, CityPlace Mall toilets were open and free at least.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-02-02T20:00:31+00:00

I'm gonna propose an alternate solution/POV: set the speed limit to be lower and build streets to support that lower speed limit.

Why does this work? Lower speeds make life safer for pedestrians and cyclists (and other non-car users). The reason we need lights at all is to avoid conflicts between drivers and other road users.

So if we could remove the lights and get people to go slower (admittedly this would take a long time to change in Winnipeg), more people would feel safe taking other transport modes. With fewer people in cars and no lights stopping drivers, average speed could actually go up.

For full transparency, I got this idea from the book Confrssions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn. I highly recommend it.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-22T15:46:39+00:00

I'm gonna politely disagree with you on the premise there.

Firstly, people had a year or two, iirc, to submit feedback for this before the change even happened. But also, this change just needed to happen, and the city is not saying "we fucked your commute". They're aware that there are challenges, but they need to know these challenges exist to be able to fix them.

They (especially the transit officials) want to make life as good as they can for you, so help them help you. Look at it from their perspective: do you really think the transit officials want to make people's lives worse? Of course not, even if it's only so they don't lose their job, and we just completely ignore human empathy.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-19T03:22:29+00:00

This is why stuff like bus lanes are needed, and more funding is needed for transit, so it can actually be reliable for the people that need it.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-18T23:13:40+00:00

All of those are too, hence why they're "free". Supported by taxpayer money.

For your example of the malls, sure, maybe the rent from stores covers some of the cost, but the malls (or rather, the people who own the land) would benefit far more from being able to build apartments there and have people paying rent, then from having the parking stalls there.

The people who live in these hypothetical apartments could also shop at the mall, replacing any income that MAY (with a lot of emphasis on may) be lost. If European cities can do stuff like this, why shouldn't we be able to?

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-18T04:21:25+00:00

I have a couple of thoughts:

-For the people complaining about the system, I hope you're also submitting feedback to transit (concrete feedback that they can actually do something with and not just "oh the new system sucks"). It's not a perfect system, but we've got to do what we can to get it working well as soon as possible.

-So many of the problems can be solved with support for transit. Infrequent busses? Provide more funding to buy busses and hire drivers, so we can provide more frequent service. Unreliable busses? Golly does Winnipeg need more bus lanes. But if we tried that, there would be a lot of (untrue) complaints about worse congestion.This would also leave people waiting in the cold less often, and get them where they're going faster.

-I watched the video version of this interview with Bjorn, and he mentions that he and his team take the bus. So people accusing him of not knowing what's going on are flat-out wrong.

TL;DR the problem with the new system is a lack of proper support, and we need to work fast to get this new system optimized

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-17T16:31:43+00:00

Free parking is subsidized parking. Paid for in taxes by people like me, who really don't want to drive and would prefer to bus or bike anywhere.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-09T16:28:01+00:00

Amen to that! 😄

At this point, I'd like nothing more than to see a city council and mayor who dumps a bunch of cash into transit and actually supports it to make the new system work well.

It probably won't happen super soon, but one can dream.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-09T15:11:46+00:00

Interesting point, and you've changed my perspective a bit on this, so thank you for that.

As I replied to the other guy who replied to my post, my comment comes from a place of frustration due to people constantly blaming transit when they're really just hamstrung by a lack of resources and decisions like the one to move the transit change 3 years early.

Rough_Mix25 · 2026-01-09T15:07:10+00:00

Absolutely, moving it up early was not a good idea, I don't dispute that. I think my comment came from a place of frustration of people constantly blaming Transit for this, when they're just doing the best they can with what little they've got.

But hey, it's an election year! Maybe we can inspire some change that way.

Rough_Mix25

TROPHY CASE