Quote:
Originally Posted by Hali87
It's a huge stretch to imply that the driver/cyclist dichotomy is a class struggle with cyclists being the "upper class" and suburban drivers being the oppressed working class.
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There are transit riders too. A car is not cheap to operate and in the scheme of Halifax rent and house payments even the cheapest car/insurance/gas must be significant. Not sure about NS but around here I'd guess $400 a month is about the baseline while rent for a person splitting a modest 2 BR could be $800 a month. A transit pass is on the order of $100 a month and a bike is almost nothing per month. I think for many people of modest means, car-free living in an urban setting that's friendly to pedestrians and cycling is pretty attractive. It's very common around here. I'd guess that only something like 1/3 of people under 40 who I know own a car.
Halifax is a pretty good city for that because it's already fairly decent for car-free living, could get much better quickly, and the inner city parts are not priced out of reach of many people. I think that if it were planned well, there could be affordable housing for tens of thousands of additional people on the peninsula, and if that population were there, the density of services would increase such that getting by without a car would become very convenient in a large portion of the metro area. Cycling would be a part of that; it's pretty much unbeatable for medium length trips or trips with lots of stops when the infrastructure is semi-reasonable and the weather is okay.