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On August 22 2018 01:06 Uldridge wrote:
When Belgium gets a surprise "snow storm" the entire Belgian traffic is hard jammed. It was insane how ill prepared we were and how slow people had to drive. I'm pretty sure we salted the streets the day before even.
I heard stories of people that had to drive just a few kilometers and they took 3 hours to get there or something like that (iirc).
And for the record, the snowstorm was like.. 20cm of snow or something lol, maybe even less (maybe a bit more I really can't say for sure, but definitely not deviating a lot from 20)
20cm is certainly enough for a respectable snowstorm (depending also on how fast the roads clear). where it gets funny is when places have issues with like 6cm of snow. (of course it's still sensible, places like that really just odn't have any of the equipment available, so they often can' even sand the roads at all).
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On August 22 2018 01:06 Furikawari wrote:
Americans are good are justifying their love for their cars. When I hear about poor city planning... Like, you know, all french towns were built/rebuilt in the last 50 years (starting with Paris btw)! I lived in Grenoble for many years, I saw temperatures from -20 to +40 many times, and guess what? Grenoble was (maybe still is, dunno) the city with the most cycles paths in France. So yeah, maybe weather is not that good of an excuse.
We could fit all of France inside Texas and have room to spare, so you are kind of a tiny little country compared to the US. And I am no expert on the weather in France, but I don’t believe you folks are known for getting meters upon meters of snow. One does not bike in the New England during the winter months.
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On August 22 2018 01:13 Plansix wrote:
We could fit all of France inside Texas and have room to spare. And I am no expert on the weather in France, but I don’t believe you folks are known for getting meters upon meters of snow.
Didnt know you have meters of snow across all the US during the whole year. Didnt know that you had to travel across your whole state everyday. Cars have their used obviously, but nothing justifies to use them as much as you do in NA. Also, Grenoble is quite close to the Alps 
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On August 22 2018 00:28 Plansix wrote:
Ghost is right that a pissing contest over weather isn’t productive. The better way to think about the US’s infrastructure is that it’s needs are as varied as all of the EU countries. The needs of New England are wildly different from the needs of Florida or Texas. And our city planning suffers from a lack of direction due to the wide variety of needs and problems that face each region. We have seen the photos of what happens when southern parts of the US get two inches of snow. Yes and no. The US is indeed as varied as all of the EU but a city in Florida doesn't care about the situation in Virginia. Each city still only has to consider its own local situation which is limited in scope in the same way that a single city in the EU is.
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On August 22 2018 01:05 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 23:51 Ghostcom wrote:On August 21 2018 21:48 Stratos_speAr wrote:On August 21 2018 17:27 Acrofales wrote:On August 21 2018 16:36 zatic wrote:
Distances in pretty much anywhere in the US are much, much longer. Anything but taking a car is just not possible. Even if it was a lifestyle choice it's not like people could now decide to change anything about it if anywhere you need to go to is a 20-30min car ride away. Distances between places being long doesn't really have much to do with city planning though. I've lived in Brazil. First I lived in Porto Alegre, which is planned with pretty good public transport and shops and businesses mixed up in the residential areas. I didn't own a car. Then in Campinas. When we arrived, the plan was to find an apartment, and then figure out if we needed a car (everybody had told us that we would). Turns out that we couldn't even do apartment hunting reasonably without a car. We ended up living in one of the few neighborhoods where you could actually walk to things and my girlfriend walked to work, we had a supermarket nearby, and we had some good bars within walking distance too. But we still needed that car. I needed it to get to work, and we needed it to get anywhere outside our compact (and safe) neighborhood. I agree change won't be fast. But cities could make an effort, and people should not just blame it on the weather. Your weather is no better or worse than places where daily life happens fine for many people without a car. For freezing winter's, there's Scandinavia. For hot summers there's Spain and Italy, or for that matter, Porto Alegre, which I'm sure can rival anywhere in the US for heat and humidity. There are a lot of different factors that contribute to the problem in the U.S. 1) Weather - I live in MN, and our metro area is significantly colder than any metro area in the U.S./Canada except for Winnipeg, and significantly colder than any metro area in Europe outside of certain Russian cities. The severe weather also does incredible damage to the roads and public transportation here (this is why our seasons are "winter" and "construction season"). 2) Geography - Not reasonable to build subways in California where there are earthquakes all the time. 3) Poor city planning - We have great public transportation in Minneapolis/St. Paul, if you live in certain sections of the metro. I live in the southeast section of the metro here and I have no reasonable public transportation options. Any public transportation option would double or triple my commute time, which is already 30-40 minutes to get to the Cities. And it probably doesn't even need to be said, but road design/freeway layout is horrendous, meaning that traffic doubles your commute time if you work normal working hours. This is true pretty much anywhere. 4) Distance - The average worker commutes roughly 25 minutes to work, and around 11% of workers have at least a 60 minute trip to get to work every day. This is, of course a lot worse in metro areas. Job/city sprawl and population density are a much bigger problem in the U.S. than in other parts of the world. 5) Cost of living - As people in Seattle/SF/other cities can attest, a huge contributing factor is that it is extremely hard to live where you work due to rent costs. I work in a nice suburb here in the Twin Cities and live in a much smaller suburb. It's a 30 minute drive for me to work. If I was to move to the suburb that I work in, it would tack on $400 to my rent, which my wife and I can't afford. If I was to move to Minneapolis/St. Paul so that I am right next to school, my rent would probably double. The only (paid) job that my wife could find in her career field is a half hour in the opposite direction away from the Cities. It's a very well-paid job, but the location is inconvenient. I have coworkers that commute 1.5 hours to get to work. There's a huge number of people that commute from Eau Claire (a small city in Wisconsin nearly 2 hours away from the Twin Cities) to work in Minneapolis/St. Paul. And to whoever said that European obesity rates are "tiny", this is simply not true. All major European countries are above 20% obesity rates, and they've been rising for a long time now. We're still the kings though. We literally cycle in that weather in Denmark. The US just has a very carcentric society neatly examplified by the average americans relation with driving distance compared to that of Europeans who flinch at the thought of a 3 hour drive. Denmark's weather is a joke compared to huge swaths of the U.S. Minneapolis is the coldest metro area in the country and our average daily summer high is around 85F (nearly 29C) and our average daily winter low is between 5-10F (as low as -15C). We have 70 days a years below 0F. While it doesn't get as cold as you get into states south of Minnesota, it gets significantly warmer, and MN is already warm in the summer. Denmark is a nice, mild vacation compared to the weather we deal with every day, and that doesn't even begin to talk about the heat in the south and southwest. I was training for a year in North Carolina (I'm in the military) and I wouldn't wish that weather on my worst enemy. The U.S. absolutely has a lot of problems with loving cars and unhealthy lifestyles, but there are certainly factors that contribute to this beyond the people's control. I am well aware of the US weather - I have lived in multiple states (including California, North Carolina and Toronto) for half and whole years. This year Denmark literally had minus 15 Celsius in January and it has been 30 plus since May - less precipitation than usually though. I didnt want to start a pissing contest about whose weather is worse, but having biked every day in the abovementioned conditions (32 km each way) I stand by my original point that weather really isn't an excuse except for rather short periods of time during the year. I fully agree that there are factors outside individuals control dictating commuting options - but the weather is frankly a minor part of it - including in North Carolina (where I incidentally biked 5 km each way) there's a difference still between "feasible for a young healthy person to do" and "comfortable to do". also, which part of Denmark are you using? (I'm looking at the Copenhagen stats, which don't seem to match what you're describing)
My 65 year old father is doing the same. Comfortability is what you make it out to be. I am using DMI (Danish weather institute sadly only Danish data) for Copenhagen these past two years. I believe we only hit -9 in Copenhagen this year, but the year prior it was colder (and then there is the chill factor which as a coastal city is far from negligible). But that is again missing my point.
I agree entirely with Plansix.
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Norway28560 Posts
On August 22 2018 01:13 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2018 01:06 Furikawari wrote:
Americans are good are justifying their love for their cars. When I hear about poor city planning... Like, you know, all french towns were built/rebuilt in the last 50 years (starting with Paris btw)! I lived in Grenoble for many years, I saw temperatures from -20 to +40 many times, and guess what? Grenoble was (maybe still is, dunno) the city with the most cycles paths in France. So yeah, maybe weather is not that good of an excuse. We could fit all of France inside Texas and have room to spare, so you are kind of a tiny little country compared to the US. And I am no expert on the weather in France, but I don’t believe you folks are known for getting meters upon meters of snow. One does not bike in the New England during the winter months.
My dad used to bike to work every day of the year, about 15 km each way, living north of Anchorage. Meters upon meters of snow actually isn't the worst - as long as shit is getting plowed regularly. I mean, don't get me wrong. I agree you can't really bike if it's too cold, and I can agree that you can't really bike if it's too hot. But the weather is at most an excuse for a couple of the months of the year where americans don't use bikes much.
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On August 21 2018 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:denmark is one of the most bicycle-friendly countries in the world. it's completely flat, weather is quite nice, it's fairly densely populated, and roads and infrastructure is designed to accommodate use of bicycles. in copenhagen in 2014, 60% of the population used a bicycle to get to work or school. ( source, danish though ;p ) Those numbers are not really attainable in other places where the climate or topography really work against you. But then, there's a city like Trondheim, where I live, which differs quite a bit from Denmark. It's really hilly. There's a lot of snow and ice - regions of the city usually experience snow from october until mid-april. The rest of the year, it's quite windy, rainy and cold. It's also stretched quite thin. I'd wager there are few urban areas in the US that are worse from a 'it's too cold and hilly' perspective - I can see how hot and humid is a different challenge though. However, even then, more than 8% of all trips in trondheim are with a bike, and it's been on an upswing for quite some time. The reason is a deliberate effort to create bicycling paths (which does sometimes mean they've had to steal part of the road that used to belong to cars) making it possible to bike without going at car-speed. Like, it really is a very challenging city to bike in, you always have to bike a lot of uphill, and if you're an all-year cyclist, you have to bike downhill on snow / ice and or gravel for 4 months+ every year. As a curiosity - backing up the point that Trondheim is a hilly city that still has a lot of cyclists, we have the world's only bicycle elevator. But still, a considerable number of people find themselves occasionally using a bike. I guess some north western regions in the US might have decent numbers too, but overall, I suspect that few urban areas in the US have numbers that could match Trondheim's, even though even fewer of your urban areas are less geographically or climatically suited for cycling.
While they've done a lot to facilitate biking in Trondheim (even having our own bike lift up one of the steepest hills), the public transport system is worse than poor. It's so bad it could be considered an improvement not to have it at all. There are few buses, driving the wrong routes, at the wrong times, never less than 5 minutes late (more often 10), the drivers are grumpy, and it's expensive to boot. A 10 min drive to work for me takes about 1.5 hours with a bus. The politicians have no idea what to do with it, and instead of attempting to fix it have sunk several hundred million dollars (308 to be exact) into new "superbuses" whose goal isn't actually to solve any of the current underlying problems. I don't mind giving up a bit of road to help cyclists, but I do mind when they close off huge bits of road to facilitate buses which doesn't go where I want them to in any reasonable amount of time.
If your everyday life is within only the city itself, then cycling is a good alternative, but if you at any point in time need to venture outside of the center limits, you're pretty much required to have a car.
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On August 22 2018 01:16 Furikawari wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2018 01:13 Plansix wrote:
We could fit all of France inside Texas and have room to spare. And I am no expert on the weather in France, but I don’t believe you folks are known for getting meters upon meters of snow. Didnt know you have meters of snow across all the US during the whole year. Didnt know that you had to travel across your whole state everyday. Cars have their used obviously, but nothing justifies to use them as much as you do in NA. Also, Grenoble is quite close to the Alps
There's gotta be some truth to this. My friends can't be bothered to walk anywhere, they are all spoiled by either their own vehicle or Uber/Lyft
We don't live in the most walkable of areas but even a trip to the bar that is less than a mile away is too much for them which blows my mind
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Canada11279 Posts
On August 22 2018 01:16 Furikawari wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2018 01:13 Plansix wrote:
We could fit all of France inside Texas and have room to spare. And I am no expert on the weather in France, but I don’t believe you folks are known for getting meters upon meters of snow. Didnt know you have meters of snow across all the US during the whole year. Didnt know that you had to travel across your whole state everyday. Cars have their used obviously, but nothing justifies to use them as much as you do in NA. Also, Grenoble is quite close to the Alps
Not the whole state, but we have the same thing up in Canada. Everything is very spread out and what's more (at least where I live there is lots of resistance to building up) which further exacerbates the sprawl. The median commute time in US is 25 minutes, which is pretty close to our Toronto and Vancouver (34 and 30) and for most of my life I've commuted 25 minutes to school and work. Things are just really spread apart, and I imagine in the US, once you get off the eastern and western seaboard, places are really low density so public transportation will never make sense. (Where I live, if you miss a bus, you'll probably wait an hour or two, compared to Vancouver where the next bus is right behind.)
You needn't mock. We aren't stupid. There are reasons things are the way they are and one of them is, the US is just a really big place and with a ton of urban planning done with the automobile in mind, not horse and buggy.
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On August 22 2018 01:16 Furikawari wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2018 01:13 Plansix wrote:
We could fit all of France inside Texas and have room to spare. And I am no expert on the weather in France, but I don’t believe you folks are known for getting meters upon meters of snow. Didnt know you have meters of snow across all the US during the whole year. Didnt know that you had to travel across your whole state everyday. Cars have their used obviously, but nothing justifies to use them as much as you do in NA. Also, Grenoble is quite close to the Alps
I have a 16 mile commute every day, it takes an hour because of traffic. There is no way to get their by public transportation and never will be. My parents live 70 miles away and the only way to get there is by car. Without a car, it is hard to live in any part of the US that isn’t a major city. It is also the reason we don’t bike everywhere.
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Zlefin, it is currently the equivalent of $1.67 per gallon for me, but I do know that in USA, it is noticeably cheaper. Still doesn't take away how ridiculous the idea that walking 500 m is particularily life threatening.
On August 21 2018 08:04 Plansix wrote:
Walking in 100 F degree heat carry food for 500 meters sounds like the worst, tbh. And slightly dangerous if someone isn’t acclimated to that kind of heat.
On August 21 2018 08:24 Sermokala wrote:
The same for wind chill that gets to -20F or knee deep snow.
On August 21 2018 10:13 ShoCkeyy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 08:04 Plansix wrote:
Walking in 100 F degree heat carry food for 500 meters sounds like the worst, tbh. And slightly dangerous if someone isn’t acclimated to that kind of heat. It's not just 100F degree heat, it's also the humidity on top of it. People choose to drive in comfort for a min, than walk for five minutes around here.
I just love some of the justifications some people have written for not walking 500 meters. Makes you wonder how some people living in south Spain or Italy next to coastlines survive. Just so everyone knows, AC isn't really that common either in homes. When I travelled to Hong Kong and several other countries around the area, it was well over 100 F, and has as high a humidity as you can get as a rainy tropical island, yet I see old Grannies walk around with no trouble. Yet some of you, who expouse rugged American freedom and independence come up with all sorts of reasons not to have a 5 min walk in less than optimum conditions. It's laughable really.
No one is saying you are morally inferior for owning a car, or that you should not use one. I live in a city with fairly good transportation options, yet I own and use a car. I absolutely have no problems with cars, and I sympathise if your options due to terrible urban planning means that you can't even walk to the shops. There are legitimate reasons for using a car, but to drive 500 meters because it's a bit too hot or cold or wet isn't one.
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Norway28560 Posts
On August 22 2018 01:27 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 23:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:denmark is one of the most bicycle-friendly countries in the world. it's completely flat, weather is quite nice, it's fairly densely populated, and roads and infrastructure is designed to accommodate use of bicycles. in copenhagen in 2014, 60% of the population used a bicycle to get to work or school. ( source, danish though ;p ) Those numbers are not really attainable in other places where the climate or topography really work against you. But then, there's a city like Trondheim, where I live, which differs quite a bit from Denmark. It's really hilly. There's a lot of snow and ice - regions of the city usually experience snow from october until mid-april. The rest of the year, it's quite windy, rainy and cold. It's also stretched quite thin. I'd wager there are few urban areas in the US that are worse from a 'it's too cold and hilly' perspective - I can see how hot and humid is a different challenge though. However, even then, more than 8% of all trips in trondheim are with a bike, and it's been on an upswing for quite some time. The reason is a deliberate effort to create bicycling paths (which does sometimes mean they've had to steal part of the road that used to belong to cars) making it possible to bike without going at car-speed. Like, it really is a very challenging city to bike in, you always have to bike a lot of uphill, and if you're an all-year cyclist, you have to bike downhill on snow / ice and or gravel for 4 months+ every year. As a curiosity - backing up the point that Trondheim is a hilly city that still has a lot of cyclists, we have the world's only bicycle elevator. But still, a considerable number of people find themselves occasionally using a bike. I guess some north western regions in the US might have decent numbers too, but overall, I suspect that few urban areas in the US have numbers that could match Trondheim's, even though even fewer of your urban areas are less geographically or climatically suited for cycling. While they've done a lot to facilitate biking in Trondheim (even having our own bike lift up one of the steepest hills), the public transport system is worse than poor. It's so bad it could be considered an improvement not to have it at all. There are few buses, driving the wrong routes, at the wrong times, never less than 5 minutes late (more often 10), the drivers are grumpy, and it's expensive to boot. A 10 min drive to work for me takes about 1.5 hours with a bus. The politicians have no idea what to do with it, and instead of attempting to fix it have sunk several hundred million dollars (308 to be exact) into new "superbuses" whose goal isn't actually to solve any of the current underlying problems. I don't mind giving up a bit of road to help cyclists, but I do mind when they close off huge bits of road to facilitate buses which doesn't go where I want them to in any reasonable amount of time. If your everyday life is within only the city itself, then cycling is a good alternative, but if you at any point in time need to venture outside of the center limits, you're pretty much required to have a car.
I use bus on a daily basis and mostly find it completely fine. There are a couple routes that are notoriously slow (and some drivers that are notoriously grumpy), and the 'superbus' initiative gets no love from me. And I agree that it's super expensive if you're an adult buying the occasional ticket, but a 6 month student pass was about $300.
Depends where you live in the city though, I'm close enough to the city center to have very many connections going anywhere, but moving two kilometers in the wrong direction would make it significantly worse.
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On August 22 2018 01:39 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Zlefin, it is currently the equivalent of $1.67 per gallon for me, but I do know that in USA, it is noticeably cheaper. Still doesn't take away how ridiculous the idea that walking 500 m is particularily life threatening. Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 08:04 Plansix wrote:
Walking in 100 F degree heat carry food for 500 meters sounds like the worst, tbh. And slightly dangerous if someone isn’t acclimated to that kind of heat. Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 08:24 Sermokala wrote:
The same for wind chill that gets to -20F or knee deep snow. Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 10:13 ShoCkeyy wrote:On August 21 2018 08:04 Plansix wrote:
Walking in 100 F degree heat carry food for 500 meters sounds like the worst, tbh. And slightly dangerous if someone isn’t acclimated to that kind of heat. It's not just 100F degree heat, it's also the humidity on top of it. People choose to drive in comfort for a min, than walk for five minutes around here. I just love some of the justifications some people have written for not walking 500 meters. Makes you wonder how some people living in south Spain or Italy next to coastlines survive. Just so everyone knows, AC isn't really that common either in homes. When I travelled to Hong Kong and several other countries around the area, it was well over 100 F, and has as high a humidity as you can get as a rainy tropical island, yet I see old Grannies walk around with no trouble. Yet some of you, who expouse rugged American freedom and independence come up with all sorts of reasons not to have a 5 min walk in less than optimum conditions. It's laughable really.No one is saying you are morally inferior for owning a car, or that you should not use one. I live in a city with fairly good transportation options, yet I own and use a car. I absolutely have no problems with cars, and I sympathise if your options due to terrible urban planning means that you can't even walk to the shops. There are legitimate reasons for using a car, but to drive 500 meters because it's a bit too hot or cold or wet isn't one.
Hong Kong has relatively consistent weather by US standards and never drops below 60 degrees F. For large parts of the US, it will be 100 degrees F and 100% humidity for like a month. Where I am from, it is like that for 2 weeks and then its on to three weeks of rain storms followed by fall and some other random weather that makes no sense for the season.
Anyone in the US could be fine living in 100 degree heat with high humility if we lived in it all the time. There was a health warning recently that runners should forgo runs in the 100 degree heat because many of them were overheating just because their body was not used to the high temp and freaked out. So yeah, Grandma from Hong Kong is fine in high temps, but would be real bummed out during her first New England.
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On August 22 2018 01:22 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2018 01:05 zlefin wrote:On August 21 2018 23:51 Ghostcom wrote:On August 21 2018 21:48 Stratos_speAr wrote:On August 21 2018 17:27 Acrofales wrote:On August 21 2018 16:36 zatic wrote:
Distances in pretty much anywhere in the US are much, much longer. Anything but taking a car is just not possible. Even if it was a lifestyle choice it's not like people could now decide to change anything about it if anywhere you need to go to is a 20-30min car ride away. Distances between places being long doesn't really have much to do with city planning though. I've lived in Brazil. First I lived in Porto Alegre, which is planned with pretty good public transport and shops and businesses mixed up in the residential areas. I didn't own a car. Then in Campinas. When we arrived, the plan was to find an apartment, and then figure out if we needed a car (everybody had told us that we would). Turns out that we couldn't even do apartment hunting reasonably without a car. We ended up living in one of the few neighborhoods where you could actually walk to things and my girlfriend walked to work, we had a supermarket nearby, and we had some good bars within walking distance too. But we still needed that car. I needed it to get to work, and we needed it to get anywhere outside our compact (and safe) neighborhood. I agree change won't be fast. But cities could make an effort, and people should not just blame it on the weather. Your weather is no better or worse than places where daily life happens fine for many people without a car. For freezing winter's, there's Scandinavia. For hot summers there's Spain and Italy, or for that matter, Porto Alegre, which I'm sure can rival anywhere in the US for heat and humidity. There are a lot of different factors that contribute to the problem in the U.S. 1) Weather - I live in MN, and our metro area is significantly colder than any metro area in the U.S./Canada except for Winnipeg, and significantly colder than any metro area in Europe outside of certain Russian cities. The severe weather also does incredible damage to the roads and public transportation here (this is why our seasons are "winter" and "construction season"). 2) Geography - Not reasonable to build subways in California where there are earthquakes all the time. 3) Poor city planning - We have great public transportation in Minneapolis/St. Paul, if you live in certain sections of the metro. I live in the southeast section of the metro here and I have no reasonable public transportation options. Any public transportation option would double or triple my commute time, which is already 30-40 minutes to get to the Cities. And it probably doesn't even need to be said, but road design/freeway layout is horrendous, meaning that traffic doubles your commute time if you work normal working hours. This is true pretty much anywhere. 4) Distance - The average worker commutes roughly 25 minutes to work, and around 11% of workers have at least a 60 minute trip to get to work every day. This is, of course a lot worse in metro areas. Job/city sprawl and population density are a much bigger problem in the U.S. than in other parts of the world. 5) Cost of living - As people in Seattle/SF/other cities can attest, a huge contributing factor is that it is extremely hard to live where you work due to rent costs. I work in a nice suburb here in the Twin Cities and live in a much smaller suburb. It's a 30 minute drive for me to work. If I was to move to the suburb that I work in, it would tack on $400 to my rent, which my wife and I can't afford. If I was to move to Minneapolis/St. Paul so that I am right next to school, my rent would probably double. The only (paid) job that my wife could find in her career field is a half hour in the opposite direction away from the Cities. It's a very well-paid job, but the location is inconvenient. I have coworkers that commute 1.5 hours to get to work. There's a huge number of people that commute from Eau Claire (a small city in Wisconsin nearly 2 hours away from the Twin Cities) to work in Minneapolis/St. Paul. And to whoever said that European obesity rates are "tiny", this is simply not true. All major European countries are above 20% obesity rates, and they've been rising for a long time now. We're still the kings though. We literally cycle in that weather in Denmark. The US just has a very carcentric society neatly examplified by the average americans relation with driving distance compared to that of Europeans who flinch at the thought of a 3 hour drive. Denmark's weather is a joke compared to huge swaths of the U.S. Minneapolis is the coldest metro area in the country and our average daily summer high is around 85F (nearly 29C) and our average daily winter low is between 5-10F (as low as -15C). We have 70 days a years below 0F. While it doesn't get as cold as you get into states south of Minnesota, it gets significantly warmer, and MN is already warm in the summer. Denmark is a nice, mild vacation compared to the weather we deal with every day, and that doesn't even begin to talk about the heat in the south and southwest. I was training for a year in North Carolina (I'm in the military) and I wouldn't wish that weather on my worst enemy. The U.S. absolutely has a lot of problems with loving cars and unhealthy lifestyles, but there are certainly factors that contribute to this beyond the people's control. I am well aware of the US weather - I have lived in multiple states (including California, North Carolina and Toronto) for half and whole years. This year Denmark literally had minus 15 Celsius in January and it has been 30 plus since May - less precipitation than usually though. I didnt want to start a pissing contest about whose weather is worse, but having biked every day in the abovementioned conditions (32 km each way) I stand by my original point that weather really isn't an excuse except for rather short periods of time during the year. I fully agree that there are factors outside individuals control dictating commuting options - but the weather is frankly a minor part of it - including in North Carolina (where I incidentally biked 5 km each way) there's a difference still between "feasible for a young healthy person to do" and "comfortable to do". also, which part of Denmark are you using? (I'm looking at the Copenhagen stats, which don't seem to match what you're describing) My 65 year old father is doing the same. Comfortability is what you make it out to be. I am using DMI (Danish weather institute sadly only Danish data) for Copenhagen these past two years. I believe we only hit -9 in Copenhagen this year, but the year prior it was colder (and then there is the chill factor which as a coastal city is far from negligible). But that is again missing my point. I agree entirely with Plansix.
comfortability is more than just what you make it out to be. Also, different people have different comfort levels.
having trouble using their site, the english version seems to revert to danish once I start looking at city data.
from other places, it looks like copenhagen has a good amount of variability; though the highs aren't as high, nor the lows as low as where I am, with differences of around 5C each way for that. I can't get clear data on humidity levels and how those are affecting things.
It'd be interesting to compare wind chill numbers if you have a source with those.
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Nah, Grandma from Hong Kong will slog through the snow too. It's cultural. How do you account for south Spain? English tourists who are hardly naturalised to hot environments, suddenly dropped overnight into their unnaturalised environment will happily go walk around for hours there and indeed anywhere else that happens to be rather hot and humid. Every year, some places in Europe get unusual heatwaves or snow, yet every year people view it as normal to walk in such weather and think you are infirm if you cannot walk 500 meters.
As for runners, depending on the runner itself, the usual advice is not to go for a run at over 30 C anyways; running 10k is absolutely different from walking 500 meters anyways. Anybody can walk 500 meters, nobody can jog 10k in good time without months of training first. One is moderate excercise for a moderate period, and the other is light excercise. You got to be pretty desperate to compare the two.
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How Do You Get Better Schools? Take the State to Court, More Advocates Say
By his own account, Alejandro Cruz-Guzman’s five children have received a good education at public schools in St. Paul. His two oldest daughters are starting careers in finance and teaching. Another daughter, a high-school student, plans to become a doctor.
But their success, Mr. Cruz-Guzman said, flows partly from the fact that he and his wife fought for their children to attend racially integrated schools outside their neighborhood. Their two youngest children take a bus 30 minutes each way to Murray Middle School, where the student population is about one-third white, one-third black, 16 percent Asian and 9 percent Latino.
“I wanted to have my kids exposed to different cultures and learn from different people,” said Mr. Cruz-Guzman, who owns a small flooring company and is an immigrant from Mexico. When his two oldest children briefly attended a charter school that was close to 100 percent Latino, he said he had realized, “We are limiting our kids to one community.”
Now Mr. Cruz-Guzman is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit saying that Minnesota knowingly allowed towns and cities to set policies and zoning boundaries that led to segregated schools, lowering test scores and graduation rates for low-income and nonwhite children. Last month, the state’s Supreme Court ruled the suit could move forward, in a decision advocates across the country hailed as important.
The case is part of a wave of lawsuits over the quality of schools in more than a half-dozen states. The suits could serve as road maps for advocates in other states amid a nationwide teachers’ movement and a push in some state legislatures for more school funding.
The legal complaints have different areas of focus — from school funding to segregation to literacy — but all of them argue that the states are violating their constitutions by denying children a quality education.
Such lawsuits were filed in past decades, but the recent cases show a renewed energy for using the courts to fight for better education, and they may signal an end to a period when many courts, after the last recession, seemed unwilling to require states to spend more money on schools.
“The courthouse doors are in effect open again,” said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, which has argued school funding cases in New Jersey and has filed amicus briefs in several of the current cases.
“What we’re seeing are the beginnings of a broader conversation about what the right to an education should look like.”
Advocates are focused on state courts because of roadblocks at the federal level: A 1973 Supreme Court decision found that unequal school funding was not a violation of the United States Constitution, which does not mention education. Last month, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that “access to literacy” was not a fundamental federal right for students in the troubled Detroit school system.
But almost every state constitution guarantees the right to an adequate education. Now, the questions making their way from campuses to the courts concern what an adequate education should consist of, and to what extent factors like money and demographics make a difference.
The lawyers who brought the federal literacy case in Michigan plan to file an appeal, and are pursuing a similar, state-level claim in California. They argue that poor students are not getting the basic reading and writing skills necessary to function as citizens in a democratic society.
In New Mexico last month, a state district court judge ruled that the state is underfunding schools, particularly those that serve large numbers of Native American, Hispanic and low-income students. The judge set a deadline of April 15 for the state to establish a new funding system for schools and even suggested which taxes could be raised to do so. She listed preschool, summer school, after-school programs and literacy programs as those that should be expanded. The state is expected to appeal the decision.
In Kansas, the state’s Supreme Court ruled last year that the school finance system was shortchanging students and was unconstitutional. Courts in Pennsylvania and Florida have agreed to hear similar cases — a break from years past, when judges in both states said such matters should be left to legislators and voters to decide.
Source
There is a big push for better educations in the state courts and to force the legislature to address the 'soft' segregation that has become the status quo for a lot of the country. The most interesting ruling is the Michigan case there a judge ruled basic literacy was not a basic right, which seems ripe for a challenge all the way up to the highest court. On top of healthcare, this is another major issue in the upcoming elections that the some Democrats have seized on. Republican's track record on education is just bad and voters are skeptical of charter schools as solution. This and the recent anti-corruption bill that Warren released is a good platform going forward.
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On August 22 2018 01:39 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Zlefin, it is currently the equivalent of $1.67 per gallon for me, but I do know that in USA, it is noticeably cheaper. Still doesn't take away how ridiculous the idea that walking 500 m is particularily life threatening. Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 08:04 Plansix wrote:
Walking in 100 F degree heat carry food for 500 meters sounds like the worst, tbh. And slightly dangerous if someone isn’t acclimated to that kind of heat. Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 08:24 Sermokala wrote:
The same for wind chill that gets to -20F or knee deep snow. Show nested quote +On August 21 2018 10:13 ShoCkeyy wrote:On August 21 2018 08:04 Plansix wrote:
Walking in 100 F degree heat carry food for 500 meters sounds like the worst, tbh. And slightly dangerous if someone isn’t acclimated to that kind of heat. It's not just 100F degree heat, it's also the humidity on top of it. People choose to drive in comfort for a min, than walk for five minutes around here. I just love some of the justifications some people have written for not walking 500 meters. Makes you wonder how some people living in south Spain or Italy next to coastlines survive. Just so everyone knows, AC isn't really that common either in homes. When I travelled to Hong Kong and several other countries around the area, it was well over 100 F, and has as high a humidity as you can get as a rainy tropical island, yet I see old Grannies walk around with no trouble. Yet some of you, who expouse rugged American freedom and independence come up with all sorts of reasons not to have a 5 min walk in less than optimum conditions. It's laughable really. No one is saying you are morally inferior for owning a car, or that you should not use one. I live in a city with fairly good transportation options, yet I own and use a car. I absolutely have no problems with cars, and I sympathise if your options due to terrible urban planning means that you can't even walk to the shops. There are legitimate reasons for using a car, but to drive 500 meters because it's a bit too hot or cold or wet isn't one.
I don't recall me arguing 500 meters would be that life threatening, though I guess others did. I'm not sure why you say 1.67 per gallon; do you mean per litre?
my prior argument with you iirc was about the cost of doing short trips and the math you used; the gas cost would run like 10 cents or something, and if that saves 5 minutes, that's not an unreasonable time savings for 10 cents.
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Its dishonest to label a lot of this small down segregation as "republican". Mostly its people from all sides wanting the best schools they can possibly get and putting the needs of their kids above all. suburban and rual planning needs to be looked at on a state level and not in the hands of small towns like that. East Minnesota is suddenly realizeing that all their schools are incredibly segregated and are spending a lot of money to make new schools to link populations back togeather. But they wouldn't have done that if the state didn't threaten them to get them to do it.
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Gotta overturn Milliken v. Bradley if you want liability for schooling choices to extend beyond district lines.
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On August 22 2018 02:36 Sermokala wrote:
Its dishonest to label a lot of this small down segregation as "republican". Mostly its people from all sides wanting the best schools they can possibly get and putting the needs of their kids above all. suburban and rual planning needs to be looked at on a state level and not in the hands of small towns like that. East Minnesota is suddenly realizeing that all their schools are incredibly segregated and are spending a lot of money to make new schools to link populations back togeather. But they wouldn't have done that if the state didn't threaten them to get them to do it.
I was mostly referencing the piss poor job of governance of many, but not all, of the states mentioned in the article. MA schools have the same problems with segregation, but the funding gap isn't as dire.
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EPT
