Notices by Not Just Bikes 🇳🇱 (notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com)

A couple of the photos showed the (very, very few) bicycle lanes that were actually plowed in Toronto, which was great, but it was really treacherous to even GET to these places in the first place.

There were a few other people cycling with me who were either very brave or, more likely, lucky enough to live and work along part of the minuscule "winter bike lane" network that were plowed.

But another photo shows the extremely dangerous situation of a semi truck in gridlocked traffic, in the dark winter rush-hour, blocking one of the very very few bicycle lanes that were actually plowed. 😩

I can't believe I ever cycled on these dangerous streets and in the dark! I don't think I would do that today. 😱

And la pièce de résistance, at the end of the photo album, was this photo of the bike rack at my work.

After braving the snow-covered car-infested streets of Toronto, I get to work and the snow plow has put all of the snow from the car parking right into the bike rack. 🤦

Google Photos just popped up with a "memories" album it auto-created with photos from 2016.

Almost all of the photos are from my bicycle commute to work, and it unintentionally showed just how ridiculous the whole "nobody cycles in the winter" excuse really is.

Most of the photos were bicycle lanes completely covered in snow, and mostly turned to hardened ice in the form of tire-treads, due to cars driving over them.

GEE, I WONDER WHY NOBODY IS CYCLING HERE?

#vikingbiking #biketo #bikewinter

And so it begins.

One of the "predictions" from my self-driving cars video that I was 100% confident would happen was that robotaxis will be programmed not to stop for pedestrians.

The idea that a single individual, outside of a motor vehicle, could stop a robotaxi is antithetical to both the tech bro mentality and American traffic engineering.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/on-roads-teeming-with-robotaxis-crossing-the-street-can-be-harrowing/ar-AA1wHy1N

It's exhausting how many Americans respond to my content with "this guy obviously has no idea how big the US is" when I have literally driven across the US seven times. I guarantee I have a better understanding of how big the US is (and how irrelevant that fact is to my content) than any of these people.

No matter how many videos I make it's still the same tired old excuses, over and over and over again.

There needs to be a word like "mansplaining" but for Americans. Yanksplaining, maybe?

NEW YOUTUBE & NEBULA CHANNEL ALERT!

Our new comedy urbanism channel, I Love the City is now live!

I Love the City is a ridiculous take on urbanist topics, and unlike Not Just Bikes, it's actually funny because other people write the jokes!

The ILTC writers are standup comedians, and they've worked on several other comedy shows, including The Daily Show, Robot Chicken, Those Who Can't, and more.

Check out our first episode, how cars killed the hat!

https://youtu.be/z4D0VMKeHjk

London (in Canada) and Utrecht (in the Netherlands) are so wildly different today that it seems almost comical to compare them. But around a hundred years ago, they were pretty similar.

https://youtu.be/4uqbsueNvag

@pinhman omg Michael was doored!? 😬 That's absolutely awful! But I'm glad he wasn't seriously injured, and the irony of this remarkable.

A Canadian government travel advisory to the Netherlands just went out today telling Canadians to beware of using Dutch trains because of thieves, and that there are "regular cases" on international trains, including the EuroStar to Paris & London.

Is this actually real?

Like, obviously I know that crime CAN happen on trains, but has there been any RECENT increase? And are there really "regular cases"?

I searched several news sites (in Dutch) and couldn't find any recent news about this. 🤷

I like the BlueSky feature of "Starter Packs," where people can make a list of accounts they like, and with one click you can follow them all.

But it's absolutely insane that you can't *remove* yourself from somebody else's list.

People are making "Starter Packs" of accounts to harass and sharing them with their followers.

They really need to add a built-in way to find out which lists you've been added to, as well as a way to remove yourself (and report the list) if they're malicious.

A friend of mine texted me to say that he's pretty sure nearly every US transit advocate in their 20s is a "fucking abrasive jackass".

I immediately asked him if he's been on Bluesky recently.

"How did you know!?"

Yup. There are many reasons I'm not on Bluesky anymore, but that was definitely one of them.

Are self-driving cars a fanciful pipe-dream or are they the future of transportation?

I don't know, but there's one thing I am sure of though: they're currently on track to fundamentally destroy the fabric of our cities.

https://youtu.be/040ejWnFkj0

My latest video is finally ready (and it almost broke me).

It's a collection of all of my thoughts about self-driving cars ... and it's nearly an hour long. 😱 I've been working on this video in the background for two years, and intensely for the past two months.

My next few videos are going to have to be shorter and more straightforward or I'm going to lose my mind. 😂

It's up on Nebula first for now:

https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-how-selfdriving-cars-will-destroy-cities

YouTube has started showing me videos of Americans coming to the Netherlands and cycling around, and I can't stop cringing.

They have no idea where they're going, they ride like they're in the Tour de France, and they very obviously don't know the rules of the road.

They mean well, but holy shit do some basic research before showing up. You're not in Portland anymore.

I have been putting it off for ages, but I'm really going to have to make a video about how to visit the Netherlands.

After a break for the summer The Urbanist Agenda podcast is back! The first episode is now on Nebula, and it'll go public on Friday:

https://nebula.tv/agenda/trams-are-great-so-why-are-toronto-streetcars-so-terrible-with-rm-transit

In this episode I talk with RM Transit about something that has bugged both of us for a long time: in many European cities, trams are some of the best forms of public transit around, and they create and enable great urbanism. Yet in Toronto, the streetcars are absolutely terrible to the point of sometimes being slower than walking.

@DimitriFayolle I have trouble watching my old videos because the voiceover was SO dry and boring.

I was often recording with a portable voice recorder in between the coats in a closet though, so it was hard to be expressive! 😁

My parents are telling everyone that, in a few months, they are going on holiday to the Netherlands but their son who lives in Amsterdam won't even bother make the effort to visit them, even though it's a domestic flight.

They're going to Bonaire. 😂

Just another normal day for NJB, filling up my Audi with gasoline! 👍 ⛽🚗

(put down the pitchforks, it's a carshare car)

My conclusions:

Toronto sucks to get around by any means of transportation; car-centric cities don't work well for anyone.

There are WAY too many destinations in the GTA that are inaccessible by transit.

It's been so many years that I forgot how gross gasoline is. Plugging in an electric car at home is so much better.

Android Auto works pretty well.

One of the things that really pissed me off when I was an advocate was when a plan that was designed to make the streets safer was vetoed by the Fire Department. And that was it: whatever the Fire Department said was what we did, because nobody can question the Fire Department.

But when firefighting is objectively done better in other countries that have safer streets, there comes a time when we need to push back a little.

https://youtu.be/j2dHFC31VtQ