Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[Markass the Worst]

CNBC (apparently a "windshield-biased" outlet) published a puff piece about e-bikes and Jason appears as one of the interviewees.


source (a), source (a)

And yes there's apparently an e-bike company named CargoCult based in Kyiv (I am not making this up they put "cult" in their name.)

Spoiler: "Navigating The E-bike Boom With America's Outdated Infrastructure" (archive)

Summary:

• E-bikes are cool because you don't have to stand next to people like on public transit and catch the coof.
• But people keep dying on them (gee I wonder why)
• They're environmentally friendly!!!!11 Get rid of your car (and don't even think about taking the bus either)
• Some e-bike vendor is interviewed, Jason Slaughter is also interviewed
• E-bikes go fast, killing both riders when they crash and pedestrians when they're crashed into (one could state this as e-bikes are pedestrian-unfriendly)
• Also turns out the batteries in these things are extremely dangerous, prone to starting hard to put out fires and have a habit of killing people, who knew? (Fun fact, electric cars have the same problem!)
• Jason says e-bikes are regulated more in the Netherlands so there's no problems (he really can't go one second without comparing everything to the Netherlands huh?)
• E-bike salesman says ackshually e-bikes aren't dangerous, the real enemy here is cars, checkmate retard, it's also the auto industry lobby's fault too
• Alongside the Netherlands, apparently China is bike-friendly too now! Jason says to get results you don't need to remove all the car traffic, "just most of it" lmao
• Jason says the danger about e-bikes going 30 mph is overblown because of the fact that cars can go 100 mph(?? sounds like whataboutism to me)
• Bike-friendly New York City is shat on for not being Amsterdam

In short it basically uncritically repeats NJB's talking points. Not to say it doesn't sound nice to be biking in Amsterdam but it really does sound like they want it for basically everyone (just like how "everyone bikes in Amsterdam" as stated by Jason at the end) even if they don't necessarily want it.

---

Here's Jason complaining about Windsor, Ontario, and calling it "Fake Windsor."


source (a)

There is so much to go over here. The hashtags, "the Canadian equivalent of Detroit", "strong windshield bias", I couldn't make him sound more like a parody of himself if I tried. There is nothing I can do here but laugh at how utterly ridiculous it is. This is a classic Not Just Bikes post.

 

[quaawaa]

A common argument pro-gun people make is that guns shouldn’t be banned because cars kill more people, and since no one fears dying in a car accident, it is irrational to fear mass shootings. Urbanists hear that argument and say we should ban guns and cars.

Someone, who doesn’t appear to be an urbanist from their post history, posted an anti-car article to /r/progun:

Article (Archive)

Luckily, the gun guys saw straight through the urbanists:



Source (Archive)

 

[LaxerBRO]

Here's Jason complaining about Windsor, Ontario, and calling it "Fake Windsor."

View attachment 4167306View attachment 4167307
source (a)

There is so much to go over here. The hashtags, "the Canadian equivalent of Detroit", "strong windshield bias", I couldn't make him sound more like a parody of himself if I tried. There is nothing I can do here but laugh at how utterly ridiculous it is. This is a classic Not Just Bikes post.

I looked a little further into this post and I have a couple things to note.

First, Jason heavily implies that the backup is due to people going to work however the photo was posted on December 30 at 16:51 (4:51 PM). Given that Detroit has transitioned to mostly administrative work and 12/31/2022 being a Saturday and quasi-holiday, I think we can discount people in this specific photo are going to work.

Another point I want to bring up is the exact location of this photo. The location seems to be a hundred feet or so away from the UPS store at 3041 Dougall Ave Unit 9, Windsor, ON N9E 1S3, Canada. This location is right before a highway entrance and going further down the road leads to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. This leads me to believe that the traffic seen is cross border traffic that is higher due to the New Years Holiday with Canadians possibly wanting to vacation in the US or visit American friends and family.

The last point I wanted to address is the normal traffic flow patterns on the area by using a photo taken on Google Street view in November 2022. The street view image is indicative of the photo being taken on a weekday due to a couple factors.

• Hotel sign welcoming a regional hockey team that played on November 12.
• Windsor Credit Union being closed on Sundays and only open on Saturdays until 12 PM / cars parked in their lot.

The time of day can be determined, roughly, based upon the known directional orientation of the photo and the alignment / length of the shadows. As Windsor, Ontario follows US Eastern time, the longer length of shadows in an Easterly direction, and the current sun set times for Windsor (5:09 PM) the Google Street View photo was indicate the image was captured around 4:20-4:40 PM. As such, we can tell that the traffic in the NJB / Jason's post is unusual vs a normal late afternoon weekday in November further supporting my holiday traffic hypothesis.



Finally, we address the border crossing issue. When public transportation is used to cross a border, that conveyance cannot proceed until everyone on is cleared with immigration. That means everyone will need to get off the bus / train then go immigration and security with all luggage needed to be accounted for and screened. Depending on how many people are crossing the border and if anyone has immigration / customs issues than the delay can be quite significant. This is because for minor issues the bus will wait for passengers to clear immigration. With cars, if some person ahead of you has an immigration issue then they pull to the side and are inspected where you can just keep on going. So what the hell is Jason / NJB suggesting? Even if people were traveling across the border for work is he suggesting that they risk a 30-40 minute delay? How about on the way back and someone has to pick up their kids from daycare?

Below I selected an apartment in the middle of Windsor, Ontario and the GM factory in Detroit so we can see what a worker would face if they followed NJB/ Jason's plan. I will even subtract 45 minutes to account for the inevitable response of just adding more pubic transit. But I will add another 30 minutes to account for immigration issues. Even with the increased public transit accommodation, the travel time is 2 hours one way for a total of 4 hours a day spent commuting. How would one live their lives like this by themselves much less if they had a child.


Enjoy a daily commute of four hours.

Christ, this shit pisses me off. Either these fucks are ignorant of the problems that could arise from their mostly car free utopia or they don't give a shit and will lie to achieve their goals. This is the reason I try not to watch Breadtubers / YT Commies and their ilk. They throw out a malformed idea that seems so popular to their viewers but upon cursory inspection the entire idea is riddled with problems.

 

[quaawaa]

Here's Jason complaining about Windsor, Ontario, and calling it "Fake Windsor."

View attachment 4167306View attachment 4167307
source (a)

There is so much to go over here. The hashtags, "the Canadian equivalent of Detroit", "strong windshield bias", I couldn't make him sound more like a parody of himself if I tried. There is nothing I can do here but laugh at how utterly ridiculous it is. This is a classic Not Just Bikes post.

This is cherrypicking. Yes, Windsor has lots of single family houses and areas like those pictures. But, it’s telling that he didn’t take pictures of Windsor’s downtown, because it looks like this:



Just more proof that they’re not advocating for the construction of dense areas, but for the destruction of the suburbs.

Jason’s correct when he calls Windsor “the Canadian equivalent of Detroit”; it’s practically a suburb of the American city and Chrysler and Ford have factories in Windsor.

 

[Yamamura]

/r/fuckcars people's view of the Netherlands' lack of cars is about as realistic as the average weeb's view that Japan is a wonderland of anime and nerdy shit. Most are breadtube types that live in some American burb, see NJB and think their lives are magically happier if they lived in a city where there's no cars, like wonderful Amsterdam!

It reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where Homer runs for garbage commissioner without any prerequisite knowledge about how anything is actually run or operates. These r/fuckcars people think life could be better theoretically, but lack the actual knowledge or understanding of how any of this could be realistically implemented in a feasible way. All they do is parrot the same talking points from the youtuber they heard it from without any thought. They just imagine that when they get the support that they'll be able to hire an "expert" to sort out all the details for them to get it to work. Not realizing that more than likely the "expert" they'll end up contracting the job to is probably going to be some grifter who will fuck everything up and take the money and run.

Also unrelated, (sorry if I'm late) but I noticed that these guys have been shitting up the rest of reddit outside of their own sub hard lately by shilling this shit on unrelated subs.

I feel like if this post was shilling anything other than talking point that happens to be in vogue at the moment, it would be banned for spam.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

It reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where Homer runs for garbage commissioner without any prerequisite knowledge about how anything is actually run or operates. These r/fuckcars people think life could be better theoretically, but lack the actual knowledge or understanding of how any of this could be realistically implemented in a feasible way. All they do is parrot the same talking points from the youtuber they heard it from without any thought. They just imagine that when they get the support that they'll be able to hire an "expert" to sort out all the details for them to get it to work. Not realizing that more than likely the "expert" they'll end up contracting the job to is probably going to be some grifter who will fuck everything up and take the money and run.

Also unrelated, (sorry if I'm late) but I noticed that these guys have been shitting up the rest of reddit outside of their own sub hard lately by shilling this shit on unrelated subs.
View attachment 4170807
I feel like if this post was shilling anything other than talking point that happens to be in vogue at the moment, it would be banned for spam.

Where was this even posted? If you hadn't brought up spamming I would've assumed this was just them making yet another attempt at Reddit Island.

 

[LeChampion1992]

I looked a little further into this post and I have a couple things to note.

First, Jason heavily implies that the backup is due to people going to work however the photo was posted on December 30 at 16:51 (4:51 PM). Given that Detroit has transitioned to mostly administrative work and 12/31/2022 being a Saturday and quasi-holiday, I think we can discount people in this specific photo are going to work.
View attachment 4169586
Another point I want to bring up is the exact location of this photo. The location seems to be a hundred feet or so away from the UPS store at 3041 Dougall Ave Unit 9, Windsor, ON N9E 1S3, Canada. This location is right before a highway entrance and going further down the road leads to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. This leads me to believe that the traffic seen is cross border traffic that is higher due to the New Years Holiday with Canadians possibly wanting to vacation in the US or visit American friends and family.
View attachment 4169643
The last point I wanted to address is the normal traffic flow patterns on the area by using a photo taken on Google Street view in November 2022. The street view image is indicative of the photo being taken on a weekday due to a couple factors.

• Hotel sign welcoming a regional hockey team that played on November 12.
• Windsor Credit Union being closed on Sundays and only open on Saturdays until 12 PM / cars parked in their lot.

The time of day can be determined, roughly, based upon the known directional orientation of the photo and the alignment / length of the shadows. As Windsor, Ontario follows US Eastern time, the longer length of shadows in an Easterly direction, and the current sun set times for Windsor (5:09 PM) the Google Street View photo was indicate the image was captured around 4:20-4:40 PM. As such, we can tell that the traffic in the NJB / Jason's post is unusual vs a normal late afternoon weekday in November further supporting my holiday traffic hypothesis.
View attachment 4169691
View attachment 4169871

Finally, we address the border crossing issue. When public transportation is used to cross a border, that conveyance cannot proceed until everyone on is cleared with immigration. That means everyone will need to get off the bus / train then go immigration and security with all luggage needed to be accounted for and screened. Depending on how many people are crossing the border and if anyone has immigration / customs issues than the delay can be quite significant. This is because for minor issues the bus will wait for passengers to clear immigration. With cars, if some person ahead of you has an immigration issue then they pull to the side and are inspected where you can just keep on going. So what the hell is Jason / NJB suggesting? Even if people were traveling across the border for work is he suggesting that they risk a 30-40 minute delay? How about on the way back and someone has to pick up their kids from daycare?

Below I selected an apartment in the middle of Windsor, Ontario and the GM factory in Detroit so we can see what a worker would face if they followed NJB/ Jason's plan. I will even subtract 45 minutes to account for the inevitable response of just adding more pubic transit. But I will add another 30 minutes to account for immigration issues. Even with the increased public transit accommodation, the travel time is 2 hours one way for a total of 4 hours a day spent commuting. How would one live their lives like this by themselves much less if they had a child.

View attachment 4170450
Enjoy a daily commute of four hours.

Christ, this shit pisses me off. Either these fucks are ignorant of the problems that could arise from their mostly car free utopia or they don't give a shit and will lie to achieve their goals. This is the reason I try not to watch Breadtubers / YT Commies and their ilk. They throw out a malformed idea that seems so popular to their viewers but upon cursory inspection the entire idea is riddled with problems.

As someone who enjoys mass transit, rails, and wants more infrastructure that's pedestrian friendly I hate the anti car people. I don't want to get rid of all cars because I ride the bus or train. I just want the options to be less shit.

I hate almost all the anti car grifters because of their inability to read through the most cursory situation.

Then again I shouldn't be surprised a leaf wants to turn the world into a gay Utopia.

 

[Yamamura]

Where was this even posted? If you hadn't brought up spamming I would've assumed this was just them making yet another attempt at Reddit Island.

The sub I found it on originally was r/DoesAnybodyElse, but looking into this guy's post history I can see that he's been copy and pasting the same post everywhere he can.


Also it gets even funnier, because in their Discord they basically are trying to create Reddit Island part 2. Where they're trying to think about buying an abandoned town in some backwoods area to develop into their car free utopia.


> If we get 7k active members that’s only $100 each, both the membership and price aren’t unreasonable

Reddit Island

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Oh and also that street and road are not interchangeable terms.

Somehow that's the weirdest thing to me about this cult. Where I live a "street" is far more likely to be a busy thoroughfare than a "road." The fact that they've inverted this is just weird.

 

[quaawaa]

More mindless hatred of Canada from Jason:

Spoiler: Image in Tweet

Source (Archive)

This is the same road he was complaining about earlier in his photo taken from the train station. He deliberately took a photo on the only section of road that doesn’t have a park in the median:

The road also has amazing transit access:

but that’s a bad thing:

Spoiler: Image in Tweet

Source (Archive)

It’s not a bizarre idea. If you have a subway under the road, you don’t need a tram above the road. Duplicating a transit line to placate a handful of bathmophobic people is a stupid idea and a complete waste of money.

Regarding his comment on sidewalk width, the sidewalks there are plenty wide and he cropped the picture to make them seem smaller:

(no bike lane because Street View picture is old).

If that road is a “stroad”, then every road is a “stroad”. It’s a road with a bike lane, wide sidewalks, and has a subway line running underneath it. He knows he is lying about how car-dependent Toronto is. Why does he get so mad over something he knows isn’t true?

Both the Canadian government and the Toronto government are ”orange pilled”
(aka WEF-controlled), and are implementing all of Jason’s policy ideas, but he can’t stop hating on them. They just removed a car lane on that road and replaced it with a bike lane and that still isn’t enough for him because they didn’t get rid of all of the car lanes. You think he would have clued in that they agreed with him after he was interviewed by their state media (CBC).

By the way, University Avenue goes from Union Station to the Ontario Legislature; it’s a grand boulevard meant to look impressive and provide nice views of important buildings.
Lots of countries have similar roads like Washington DC, USA:

and The Hague, Netherlands:



Source (Archive)

---

Spoiler: Image in Tweet

Source (Archive)
Some of his Canadian fans tell him he’s wrong:

Toronto has a greenbelt that they are just starting to breach now because it turns out that densifying doesn’t lower housing prices enough when you import over 1% of your population every year. They have literally already tried banning sprawl and it was a disaster. I don’t believe that a Canadian urbanist activist like Jason has never heard of the greenbelt. Also, what happened to getting rid of zoning rules and supporting the free market?

Spoiler: Image in Tweet

Ottawa isn’t the only city in Canada with accessible nature.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

Below I selected an apartment in the middle of Windsor, Ontario and the GM factory in Detroit so we can see what a worker would face if they followed NJB/ Jason's plan. I will even subtract 45 minutes to account for the inevitable response of just adding more pubic transit. But I will add another 30 minutes to account for immigration issues. Even with the increased public transit accommodation, the travel time is 2 hours one way for a total of 4 hours a day spent commuting. How would one live their lives like this by themselves much less if they had a child.

Great analysis I just don't think any blue collar auto plants worker from Canada would be working in the Detroit factory. Hard enough to qualify for a greencard. Most of the cross border commuters from Windsor into Detroit work as nurses. Especially since nurses can earn way more money than in Canada where Doug Ford has capped wages and refuses to address Housing affordability (fueling the Ontario Healthcare crisis).

 

[JJLiautaud]

but that’s a bad thing:

Spoiler: Image in Tweet

Source (Archive)

It’s not a bizarre idea. If you have a subway under the road, you don’t need a tram above the road. Duplicating a transit line to placate a handful of bathmophobic people is a stupid idea and a complete waste of money.

What different purpose does a tram serve compared to a subway? Both move bugmen to and fro, like I genuinely dont understand.

 

[LaxerBRO]

What different purpose does a tram serve compared to a subway? Both move bugmen to and fro, like I genuinely dont understand.

A tram allows is slower and can be requested to stop anywhere unlike every quarter mile or so with a subway..

But the main reason is that it takes another lane away from cars. I have said it before and I will say it again, these fucks don't care about mass transit. They want to make getting from the suburbs to an urban area as difficult as possible so more people will move into the cities.

The only reason they don't get rid of all car lanes is that it would be too much of a direct assault and prompt backlash in addition to slowing down delivery of their precious FunkoPops and takeout.

 

[quaawaa]

Two more reasons why it’s pointless to cater to urbanists:


Source (Archive)


Source (Archive)

---

Someone asked /r/notjustbikes to explain how exactly suburbs are subsidized by dense cities and cites Naples, FL as an example. Naples is nearly entirely low-density and isn’t a commuter town. It can not be subsidized by a nearby dense city, because there isn’t one:

Jason’s response:

If only. Too bad your videos don’t cite a single legitimate source. I’m still waiting for you or Chuck to name a single suburban city that went bankrupt due to the cost of infrastructure. Also, land doesn’t pay taxes, people do, and most suburban residents pay far more than their fair share of taxes. Naples residents are definitely net contributors as the city has a median household income of $125,306.

None of the other comments are worth posting because none of them have any original thoughts; they’re all just mindlessly repeating NJB/Strong Towns.
Source (Archive)

 

[talk talk talk]

While an exaggeration, the "Growth Ponzi Scheme" idea has a kernel of truth. That truth is that infrastructure has maintenance costs and a lifespan. A wise government will properly budget annually for maintenance and have reserves for eventual replacement of infrastructure at the end of its lifespan.

Are local governments wise about this? Some are and some aren't. A lack of wisdom can be encouraged when other entities pay much of the initial cost of infrastructure, such as when the federal government pays 90% of the cost of a new interstate highway, blinding local governments to their ongoing need to pay for maintenance and eventually replacement. That free federal (and state) money can make some local governments nigger rich.

Orange County, CA is the largest example of a municipality going bankrupt in the US. But in general, Chapter 9 bankruptcies are disfavored and "deals" are worked out to keep effectively bankrupt municipalities limping along. Detroit should be bankrupt, but limps along with state money while its infrastructure slowly decays.

The r/fuckcars and NJB people are hooting' and hollerin' for the collapse they think is going to prove them right and the whole bus will stand up and clap for them. I don't think that is coming. Wise local governments will be in decent shape financially to keep up their shit. More marginal local governments will get a variety of state and federal bailouts to keep them going. Some will go the way of Detroit and slowly decay. But, contrary to the dreams of the Slaughterites, car infrastructure will probably be the last thing to be abandoned due to costs. It is more likely that local governments will cut back on bike lanes and transit before that.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

While an exaggeration, the "Growth Ponzi Scheme" idea has a kernel of truth. That truth is that infrastructure has maintenance costs and a lifespan. A wise government will properly budget annually for maintenance and have reserves for eventual replacement of infrastructure at the end of its lifespan.

Are local governments wise about this? Some are and some aren't. A lack of wisdom can be encouraged when other entities pay much of the initial cost of infrastructure, such as when the federal government pays 90% of the cost of a new interstate highway, blinding local governments to their ongoing need to pay for maintenance and eventually replacement. That free federal (and state) money can make some local governments nigger rich.

Orange County, CA is the largest example of a municipality going bankrupt in the US. But in general, Chapter 9 bankruptcies are disfavored and "deals" are worked out to keep effectively bankrupt municipalities limping along. Detroit should be bankrupt, but limps along with state money while its infrastructure slowly decays.

The r/fuckcars and NJB people are hooting' and hollerin' for the collapse they think is going to prove them right and the whole bus will stand up and clap for them. I don't think that is coming. Wise local governments will be in decent shape financially to keep up their shit. More marginal local governments will get a variety of state and federal bailouts to keep them going. Some will go the way of Detroit and slowly decay. But, contrary to the dreams of the Slaughterites, car infrastructure will probably be the last thing to be abandoned due to costs. It is more likely that local governments will cut back on bike lanes and transit before that.

The whole "suburbanites are subsidized by the city" is fundamentally wrong because in most cities, the "suburbs" are separate municipalities. In places where that isn't the case, the suburbs are annexed by the city, meaning that the suburbs are worth having the city (they pay taxes but the city isn't obligated to give them sewer or garbage services immediately, etc.).

 

[Return of the Freaker]

The whole "suburbanites are subsidized by the city" is fundamentally wrong because in most cities, the "suburbs" are separate municipalities. In places where that isn't the case, the suburbs are annexed by the city, meaning that the suburbs are worth having the city (they pay taxes but the city isn't obligated to give them sewer or garbage services immediately, etc.).

There was an earlier poster, a Brit iirc, who didn't get this either. Said that if suburbs had their own mayor etc then they weren't suburbs. Idk if he thought US cities and suburbs worked like the London boroughs or what

 

[Xarpho's Return]

There was an earlier poster, a Brit iirc, who didn't get this either. Said that if suburbs had their own mayor etc then they weren't suburbs. Idk if he thought US cities and suburbs worked like the London boroughs or what

That's understandable, half the stuff in Bongland means something totally different than what burgers are used to. Public school. Living on the second story. Football. Eating chips.

 

[talk talk talk]

The whole "suburbanites are subsidized by the city" is fundamentally wrong because in most cities, the "suburbs" are separate municipalities. In places where that isn't the case, the suburbs are annexed by the city, meaning that the suburbs are worth having the city (they pay taxes but the city isn't obligated to give them sewer or garbage services immediately, etc.).

The original meaning of the Growth Ponzi scheme was that suburbs have to continue to grow because they do not properly budget for infrastructure maintenance and replacement. Instead, they get new money by converting low value agricultural land to higher value residential land and collect higher taxes from it. The contention is that they tend not to collect enough new taxes to actually maintain and replace the infrastructure built by developers.

That may or may not be the case. But the idea is completely different than the Slaughterite idea that cities are subsidizing suburbs. I doubt the average Slaughterite even knows what property taxes are.

 

[singlele]

"It really is a backwater country, but Canadians are completely oblivious to it... a backwards country of mediocrity"

The first thing that comes to mind when I read these... Tweets? is the "third world country with a Gucci belt" Reddit-ism but about Canada instead of the US. Obviously Canada isn't the liberal utopia Reddit claims it is, same with the other Reddit Good Countries (Germany, Netherlands, the Nordic countries), but that whole "(highly developed and industrialized country with an advanced economy and high GDP and HDI) is actually third world" shit on reddit has to be one of the most annoying things that's become somewhat popular on the internet in recent years. I get that they don't literally mean it but that doesn't mean it isn't retarded. And sometimes you'll hear "We don't literally mean it's a third world country, we just mean (elaboration that means the exact same fucking thing)", an elaboration that applies to way more than in that case (see: defund/abolish the police).