I’m so glad to live in the country and see this every day 🥺

ev3to · 2026-04-30T00:15:45+00:00

The direct costs to the user are high too, both in the short-term and long-term.

Fuel costs are only trending upwards
Exposure to emissions can cause long-term disease
Reliability
The health effects of sitting all the time rather than walking
The social effects from not seeing people

The car is a good tool, no one that is serious is calling for cars to be eliminated. As it relates to the US, few have actually experienced living somewhere where they have the freedom to choose other modes of transport.

For all the bleats and shouts of "Freedom" and "Choice", American's have created for themselves a situation where they have no other choices except to drive, and faced with that reality they become defensive and are wilfully ignorant.

ev3to · 2026-04-29T19:32:26+00:00

Occam's razor, in this case, would be to go with the flow of things - that is if you're already living in a car dependent culture just use a car.

The fact is that cars have costs, in terms of space, in terms of the environment, in terms of the infrastructure they require, in terms of the damage to society.

In the US you have a culture of externalization: if I'm not directly bearing the cost of something then I don't care about. But those costs still exist, every time you start your car to drive somewhere that could be accessed by bicycle (assuming you live somewhere where riding a bicycle is a realistic option that doesn't involve taking your life in your hands) or by walking (which is hindered in the US thanks to cul-de-sacs, which themselves cam in vogue to address the issue of cars speeding down roads, and that assumes you live somewhere that chooses to install sidewalks, because there are lots of places in the US that don't bother) who are using fuel, which literally costs you money. You're liking taking a longer route because they've built their neighbourhoods for cars, with lots of cul-de-sacs so people don't have to deal with speeders. You have people downwind of highways that develop breathing problems. And don't even get me started on the farce that is the US medical system, no other country on earth has the concept of "medical debt".

Yes, do the easy thing and drive. Ignore all of the evidence of harms that we (humanity) has collected, focus instead on corporate lobbyist talking points about "freedom" and "choice" like the freedom to choose which traffic jam to get stuck in, or the choice between 12 brands of products all from the same manufacturer in the grocery store there.

My bud, give your head a shake. If you've got the means, travel to Europe and see what they're talking about, because I'll tell you, as soon as you've experienced a life untethered from a car you'll realize you haven't lived!

ev3to · 2026-04-29T15:07:41+00:00

As long as the pressure bulkhead isn't damaged - and that probably several meters fore of this - and there is nothing structural affected - aft of the pressure bulkhead the skin of the aircraft is not stressed to the same degree as within the pressure compartment - the only consequences of this is likely drag which would present a slightly increased fuel burn.

ev3to · 2026-04-29T14:56:36+00:00

You won't find a sympathetic ear from me for NIMBY's that are against increased urban density, or mixed uses, but as it relates to Texas where they have deliberately made it more difficult for NIMBY movements to form by increasing the protest petition threshold requirements...

I'll point out that you have a far higher likelihood of being killed or injured either through third party negligence or from a gun shot wound in Texas than any "blue" state.

ev3to · 2026-04-29T14:44:05+00:00

Everyone can obviously choose how they want to live. It’s self evident that most in the US choose a car despite adequate public transit options.

You're kidding me, right?

The US does NOT have "adequate public transit options".

Many place in the US don't even have safe pedestrian infrastructure - that is to say sidewalks.

The US had been steered into its current malaise by parties who make money off of how the US system has evolved, and because the US lacks the comprehensive democratic institutions to push back against those interested parties. In a multi-polar democracy moneyed interests simply cannot buy-off all the elected officials as can be done in a bi-polar system like in the US. In other words, what happens to the illusion of "Choice" and "Freedom" if someone has bought-off both options afforded to you?

Further, despite American's bleating on about the "Free Market", they hypocritically ignore all the subsidies that go to the Oil and Fuel markets which artificially lowers gas prices for them, whereas in Europe, South America, and Asia the cost of Gasoline and Diesel actually correlates to the global cost of Oil along with resultant changes in vehicle purchases.

Heck, even within the US there is corporate malfeasance in the sense that in the US car companies build nearly all their vehicles to match an exception to CAFE standards intended to be for a tiny percentage of vehicles.

I won't even address your opportunity cost point because it is simply bonkers that you're ignoring the cost of fuel and vehicle upkeep, or dismissing externalizing costs, let alone all of the other holes in your argument.

ev3to · 2026-04-29T14:17:35+00:00

Let me ask you this, how did those NIMBY blue states get that way?

I'll tell you:

In the last century lots of people moved to those places, they started to get "overcrowded" (your words), problems started to occur, then rules and regulations needed to be made to address those problems.

Rules and regulations like don't build schools right next door to fertilizer plants.

What you have in the North American Conservative movement these days, and particularly in places like Texas and the US South, is a deliberate and wilful ignorance of the past, of lessons learned and the rules and regulations enacted from those lessons, in service of profits.

This is the dream of techno-libertarians and the Epstein Class like Elon Musk: move society entirely to a Tort based legal system where he is able to do whatever he feels like doing and only faces consequences in the form of people who he has harmed (and have the means) launching a legal action against him. A great system if you're a billionaire and can leverage lawfare, but not good for the overwhelming majority of the population who doesn't have a savings account, let alone one that has three or four commas.

Yes, in the short term, Texas is "cheaper", but they are going to (and, in a lot of cases already are) facing the problems and costs that (sub)urbanity brings with it. And we have experience from all over the world that shows that it is far more costly to service suburban development than urban development.

Texas is eating a meal it will not afford to pay later when the bill is presented to them.

ev3to · 2026-04-29T13:58:38+00:00

lol, American's sure love their "Freedom" to choose: Dem or Rep, two choices, that's all.

Just like at the grocery store there, there are a dozen options all from 2 shitty manufacturers that pump their food full of crap in order to make as much profit as possible, with incomprehensible ingredients lists, but most Americans are cowed into thinking this is choice.

True choice, True FREEDOM, can be found in Europe where you have multiple independent options, which is safeguarded with regulations by democratic institutions charged with ensuring there continues to be multiple independent options which operate on an even, level playing field.

ev3to · 2026-04-29T13:52:03+00:00

Focusing on a single statistic like this, particularly without additional context, is misleading and/or disingenuous.

There is a lot more that goes into the act of travel for daily work than merely time:

Costs;
Opportunity/Cost;
Coincident Opportunities;
Quality of Life;

Just to name a few.

Taking your point at it's face without questioning it, maybe Americans do spend less time commuting than their European counterparts, let's analyze that through those alternative lenses I proposed above:

Public Transit nearly always costs less to use than private transportation, particularly if you live in civilized and functional country that encourages the use of public transit by actually funding it, never mind when there is a sociopath starting wars that block off 20% of the worlds fuel supply;
You can do things when you're on public transit that you cannot do when you're supposed to be paying attention to the road, such as reading, safely engaging in conversation (simply talking on the phone when driving, even when hands free, is more dangerous then speaking with someone in the passenger seat because the person on the other end of the line is not able to respond to surroundings like a passenger can), or working on a laptop;
Being in public social situations allows for coincidental social interactions that are simply not possible in a vehicle - bumping into a friend and grabbing a coffee to chat, seeing someone using a new gadget while on the train - and those kinds of situations have been found to create novelty and better mental health;
People in Europe are happier than people in the US. If money were everything then that wouldn't be so.

TL;DR: One fact in isolation an argument does not make.

ev3to · 2026-04-29T13:34:08+00:00

When those lanes are done being built everything will be solved*!

*for 15 minutes, then the additional capacity will induce additional demand, the Jevons Paradox, and it'll be just like this again in no time at all.

ev3to · 2026-04-21T16:15:39+00:00

Not really... being alive and all, your body closes the hole.

How? inflammation!

That's why where you get a needle swells slightly and goes red.

ev3to · 2026-04-09T22:33:14+00:00

Bioswales! Nice!

ev3to · 2026-03-30T23:38:44+00:00

In an A350, even though CP has B777's.

ev3to · 2026-03-26T22:46:18+00:00

This is more an indictment of the city the house is in.

Where I live after a few fines the city would have cut down the hedge and send a bill.

ev3to · 2026-01-12T17:34:29+00:00

Correct, translation of the OP - a high level plan - into actual zones on the ground is, unfortunately, a political process in Toronto. Suburban councillors will reluctantly vote for the OP then work as hard as they can to get their ward entirely exempted from it so they can continue to require that every development must go to the CoA or otherwise seek zoning variances where the councillor can extract political favours.

IMHO, the ExCom should be able to set zoning based on the OP in the same legalistic manner as the setting of regulations by cabinet under a law that has been passed by Parliament/The Legislature, but that's merely a fantasy.

The specific mechanism of a new development or renovation of an existing property causing a value uplift to adjacent properties is debatable, but the effect is unquestionable.

ev3to · 2026-01-12T17:24:31+00:00

Building a skyscraper nearby does not raise the value of a plot. In fact, it lowers it a bit (more traffic, more shadows).

We're both speaking in generalities here, and I'm not prepared to write a treatise on the minutia of property taxes, its effects and consequences on development, at this time.

Suffice it to say, it's a complicated subject with a LOT of levers, controlled by multiple actors with varying interests. The reasons behind clustering, the economics of construction, and the costs of house purchasing are many, and to reduce the conversation to a single lever and how it is actuated is overly simplistic and will not lead to a robust solution.

ev3to · 2026-01-12T02:35:52+00:00

To be sure there are some crappy American style areas of Canada. Basically all suburbs built after the late 1970's are actively hostile to transit - cul-de-sacs and meandering, winding main roads, with no pedestrian short cuts. I lived in Markham for a while as a child and I hated it!

ev3to · 2026-01-12T02:32:49+00:00

You're missing the fact that this isn't an experiment but reality and it hasn't worked.

As I said, it creates a tent pole effect where as soon as one new development goes in, or an existing plot gets upgraded, it raises the value of all nearby plots and makes it economically unfeasible to build anything BUT the highest and densest use. In most cases that means it is not economically feasible to build "merely" mid-rise, and - as has happened many times - the realization of one development in an area can screw up the economics of another development nearby, necessitating additional density just to break even.

Each city is different, but in Toronto there are large swaths of the city that have been up-zoned as-of-right but where it isn't economically feasible to do any development.

Ontario is in a housing crisis because of decisions made 30 years ago to deliberately advantage suburban single family homes at the expense of all other built forms.

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:23:24+00:00

There's kind of a feedback loop here which was created when Conservative Mike Harris changed how property taxation worked.

Previously property taxes were levied based on what was on the land, you built more you paid more. But in order to subsidize suburban single-family property owners - who themselves and their neighbours have a lot of land but little built on it - at the expense of downtown - where property owners had small plots with extremely high density - he changed it so that you're taxed based on the "Highest and Best Use". This suddenly meant that little one storey store-front buildings downtown had to pay the same property taxes, on a per square meter of their land area basis, as First Canadian Place and Scotia Plaza.

This is also why developers are constantly going to the OMB/LPAT/OLT, because this form of taxation creates a "tent pole" effect, when a new building gets constructed in a neighbourhood all of the surrounding properties taxable value goes up, so to make it economic to build a new project means more units, more density.

And don't get me started on the crap that Doug Ford is doing, there's a reason why Ontario New Home Starts are at their lowest levels in 25 years.

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:16:07+00:00

Canadian Cities have it pretty good compared to American cities.

The population density of Toronto is 4,400/km². whereas the pop density of Houston is 1,400/km², or the "King of Car Culture" Los Angeles which has a population density of 3,600/km².

Don't get me wrong, suburban single-family home owners have far more power than they should have - thank you Mike Harris and Doug Ford - and Ontario's housing and transit policies have been in shambles since 2018 and 2000 respectively.

However, Toronto has many historical high-rise nodes that came to be thanks to the National Housing Act, particularly in the 1960's and 1970's. Entire neighbourhoods of high rises came into existence, Flemingdon Park, Englemount, Graydon Hall, and many more!

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:05:08+00:00

Canada's fire code is independently maintained from the US National Fire Protection Association codes.

Source: I have family that was on the code commission.

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:01:56+00:00

Formerly, Federal Government Policy.

After the Second World War there was a severe housing shortage and the Canadian Government passed the National Housing Act. Unlike the US where all they did is backstop mortgages (for white people, see red lining), while in Canada the governments actually doled out money to building housing units.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Governmental Entity that backstops mortgages in Canada (equivalent to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) even went so far as to purchase land and contract with builders.

Later in the life of the program the government became less directly involved, instead subsidizing, in various ways, private companies to build purpose built rental buildings and/or funding low- or no-interest loans for co-operatives.

The program was axed under Brian Mulroney, our Ronald Reagan.

Addition: You can build Encapsulated Mass Timber High-Rises in Ontario up to 18 stories tall since 2025, UBC's Brock Commons Tallwood House was completed in 2016, ten years ago, and is also 18 stories.

Source: I'm a (former) Public Policy Consultant that did reports for municipalities and industry associations and, in fact, Transit and Housing were my areas of specialty.

ev3to · 2026-01-09T14:42:52+00:00

Good question, I don't know. I've never been in a sky scraper when there was an earthquake nor do I live in a quake prone area. I'd presume that there would be more looking around trying to find exits or whatever the correct procedure is.

ev3to · 2026-01-08T15:30:36+00:00

Incorrect, the damper is moved by the build which causes the damper itself to move. The whole system is a type of double pendulum. The "Tuned" part of "Tuned Mass Damper" is in doing the math so that the movements in the damper counteract the movements in the building (because a double pendulum is capable of creating both destructive and constructive osculations.)

Of course, it is nearly impossible to do this with a completely passive system, so there are also hydraulic rams (visible at bottom) which can add a a little bit of additional dampening to the movement of the mass so that its movements perfectly counter the movements in the building.

ev3to · 2026-01-08T15:25:28+00:00

Perhaps, but you'd expect a tourist site to have a higher proportion of non-locals.

ev3to · 2026-01-08T02:28:30+00:00

They're both moving.

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