It's inconceivable to me that my kids can't bike to school because of all the car traffic around it... caused by parents dropping off their kids to school. Cars increase the safety of the people inside them at the detriment of everybody else.

We can thankfully begin to hear the death rattles of car-dependent urban planning and our cities will be much better once it's behind us.

Also, air pollution from cars & child pedestrian deaths has never been lower.

Cars, even EVs, are the main cause of small particulates in the air of our cities.

Cars are the #1 cause of death of children, followed by drowning.

Pedestrian deaths are actually on the rise for the past ten years or so in the US and Canada due to the increasing popularity of large SUVs and pickup trucks, which have poor visibility and blunt hoods.

It's a disaster for those of us outside the car and the saddest part is that it's a problem that has been solved in most of the developed world.

I've lived on three continents, and Toronto is the safest, cleanest city I've ever been in. You could totally make living there without a car work (if not comfortably). There are like 2-3 cities on the entire continent where that is true. In Europe, there are more walkable cities, but you pay heavily for that directly and indirectly. Cars are a big economic boost.

You yourself admit that once you bought a car in Toronto "Life became 10x easier", so which way is it?

As for living there without a car, that's all I've ever done, so I'm quite familiar with the pros and cons. As I said earlier, I have no doubt that it would be convenient to live in Toronto with a car, it's just that I refuse to become part of the problem.

Also, just because it is not as bad as the worst places we can think of doesn't mean it is any good. Just look at the number of children and women riding their bikes for daily errands, as it is a good rule of thumb for how cycling friendly a place really is.

As for their economic consequences, car-centric suburbs are objectively a net drain to a city's coffers regardless of our personal opinion [0].

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt...

- Life without a car in Toronto is tolerable if you live downtown because it's a big, kind-of-dense city. Buying a car makes it much better.

- Cars unlock a huge amount of economic activity - employees and customers can now reach many more businesses, and haul more stuff back and forth, much faster than walking/cycling/bussing. More people, more stuff, more quickly = bigger economy. This truth of this is obvious and is independent of how US municipalities fund their highway maintenance, whether people live in suburbs or not, or your personal opinion.

Buy a car. I promise you'll love it.

> Life without a car in Toronto is tolerable

> Buying a car makes it much better / Life became 10x easier [with a car]

> Buy a car. I promise you'll love it

So, according to your experience, life in Toronto without a car is "tolerable" and it becomes "much better" or "10x easier" with a car.

If driving a car makes such a difference, isn't that all the evidence you need to argue that Toronto's car-dependent urban planning is, indeed, a disaster for everybody without a car?

> Cars unlock a huge amount of economic activity - employees and customers can now reach many more businesses, and haul more stuff back and forth, much faster than walking/cycling/bussing

That is only true in a car-dependent city where car traffic is facilitated at the expense of all other modes of transportation. This isn't theory, it is how it works in most of the developed world.

In a city that is designed to facilitate the throughput of people rather than the flow of private motor vehicles, having a car or not doesn't make much of a difference because other alternatives are just as fast and convenient.