![[image] The Mayor of Calgary, Canada, just received this warning letter about constructing bike lanes](https://jlai.lu/pictrs/image/4bd5cc88-5d64-40d6-a5f1-169d8bc8d6d5.webp){kind=link}
cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/22167250
The Mayor of Calgary, Canada, just received this warning letter
Context
Alberta is a conservative Canadian province that is rich because they extract a lot of oil.
The Alberta Government opposes all measures that could reduce oil-production or reduce oil-consumption. For instance, the Government of Alberta publically protested against the Canadian Government when Canada tried to take measures to reduce plastic pollution.
Calgary is the largest city in Alberta. The city is facing the worse traffic violence in Canada.
Jyoti Gondek, Mayor of Calgary, recently suggested building more safe bike lanes to reduce car dependency. A few days later, her office received this warning letter from the Alberta Government.
I don’t he understands what road capacity actually entails. The space for a car vs the space for a bike. Bikes win the density game
Idiots like that only see in terms of volume rather than people moved.
So seeing a traffic jam, which might only have a hundred cars, is like a wet dream to them compared to seeing a thousand cyclists in half the amount of space.
It’s disturbing that somebody like that could even be in any position of power, let alone ministry of transportation.
Ah but you see, cars are the only viable modern transit so we made our model not count bike trips as valid trips and also made our models assume no one will be biking for the next 20 years cause as we keep adding car lanes and increasing lane number and car speeds, cyclists have been decreasing. We also made sure to not even include existing bike routes in our transportation model.