Madrid has heat waves like Toronto has never seen, Oulu has tons of snowy winters that would cause Toronto to Call In The Army (Torontonians will get the reference), Porto and Lisbon have lots of hills, etc. etc. All these cities have modern, 21st century, first-world public transit appropriate for their size. They have sidewalks that don't make people not currently inside a car feel like second-class citizens. They have cycling infrastructure and they even maintain it in winter! Toronto, and essentially all other big North American cities, don't have these things, or are currently making baby steps toward getting them. (Even NY's system is neglected for decades and simply riding on the coattails of past decisions made when the city was run by adults).
What possible difference does it make that Toronto might have both weather extremes if there are so many examples of better-designed and better-run cities successfully dealing with any of them? Just intellectually lazy excuses.
>Yes, people walk and take public transit. But that's because they can't afford a car.
No, they very often do it by choice. You'd see people making that choice in the US too, but they can't. Their choice is car or stay the fuck home. Millions of Americans also can't afford a car, but they buy one anyway because they can't get to work in any other way. They are forced to pay through the nose (relative to their income) for one, whereas in Europe they'd be far more likely to have a viable public transit option. By viable I mean frequent, convenient and comfortable. There are probably a dozen such systems in North America, if not fewer, and even those systems don't reach most of the population of their city. NY, Montreal and Toronto are the partial exceptions, and Toronto only because of the best bus system in North America.
>And their economic counterparts in the U.S. similarly bike, walk, or take public transit.
You'd need a moderate to severe death wish to routinely walk or bike outside your little bubble of a subdivision in the majority of North American suburbs. Much worse in the US, but true of Canada as well. Downtowns are every bit as bad. As soon as you hit a stroad [0], you start re-evaluating your life choices.
Madrid's "heat waves" don't compare to anything in the American South or Southwest. It gets warmer in San Jose than it does in Madrid. The Midwest gets colder than Oulu; you have to go to the northern remote reaches of Europe to get comparable temperatures or snow.
So basically, what it boils down to is that you're comparing cities with temperate weather to cities with extreme weather and not understanding that weather makes a huge difference.
NY, Montreal and Toronto are the partial exceptions, and Toronto only because of the best bus system in North America.
This is false, and betrays a fundamentally poor knowledge of America's public transportation systems. LA, SF Bay Area, Chicago, and DC also have good bus systems; LA's bus system has the most geographic coverage of any metropolitan bus network in the world.
You'd need a moderate to severe death wish to routinely walk or bike outside your little bubble of a subdivision in the majority of North American suburbs
This is false. You appear to have formed your understanding of American geography based on movies and television. Millions of people routinely walk and bike in North America. Most of us don't live in suburbs.
I think there's also a misunderstanding of how these tunnels "work" in practice.
The ones in Montreal (and Kobe, Toronto, etc) don't seem to replace surface streets or transit; they complement it. The Réso in Montreal overlaps with some of the most walkable parts of the city and a half-dozen metro stops, plus train stations and bus depots.
I also don't think many people "thru-hike" it either. A lot of it is short trips (e.g., grabbing lunch) that would be doable, but a bit more annoying, if you had to re-dress for the weather on each end.
What possible difference does it make that Toronto might have both weather extremes if there are so many examples of better-designed and better-run cities successfully dealing with any of them? Just intellectually lazy excuses.
>Yes, people walk and take public transit. But that's because they can't afford a car.
No, they very often do it by choice. You'd see people making that choice in the US too, but they can't. Their choice is car or stay the fuck home. Millions of Americans also can't afford a car, but they buy one anyway because they can't get to work in any other way. They are forced to pay through the nose (relative to their income) for one, whereas in Europe they'd be far more likely to have a viable public transit option. By viable I mean frequent, convenient and comfortable. There are probably a dozen such systems in North America, if not fewer, and even those systems don't reach most of the population of their city. NY, Montreal and Toronto are the partial exceptions, and Toronto only because of the best bus system in North America.
>And their economic counterparts in the U.S. similarly bike, walk, or take public transit.
You'd need a moderate to severe death wish to routinely walk or bike outside your little bubble of a subdivision in the majority of North American suburbs. Much worse in the US, but true of Canada as well. Downtowns are every bit as bad. As soon as you hit a stroad [0], you start re-evaluating your life choices.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad