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View from Europe: The Increasingly Convincing Case for Canada Joining the EU (www.policymagazine.ca)
submitted 8 months ago by [M] to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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[โ€“] 10 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

Everything is car centric, and if you're not rich enough to own a car, you're basically excluded from public life

Amsterdam changed. Amsterdam city streets with and without cars, before and after cycling infrastructure

Paris is changing.

โ€ฆ Kรธbenhavn

Seriously, visiting North America is โ€œweโ€™ve tried adding a [car] lane to the highway and canโ€™t figure out why nobody is cycling or taking transit.โ€

Transportation networks indeed make little sense when thereโ€™s an ocean in between. Too bad the USA canโ€™t play nicely with others.

Common standards would be a challenge, in some areas -canโ€™t do electrical because 50hz vs 60hz and deep integration with USA grid. The NEMA plugs are a bit of a nightmare. But for vehicle safety and emissions it would be a step forward; more countries adopted the EU than US standards there.

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  • [โ€“] 5 points 8 months ago*

    It's actually changing here too, at least in cities. Bike lanes being added, streets being repurposed back to foot and bike traffic. Improved public transit.

    I don't even think the electrical changes would be hard because of US integration, it would be hard because of so much of it. We could switch. Most houses already have a 240 circuit needed for things like car chargers, dryers and ovens. You could easily retrofit a house. But the grid feeding that house would need to be rebuilt from the ground (pun intended) up.

    Edit: re electricity: We apparently did this in the early 50s once already. We were on a 25hz system, and power technicians went to every single house and retrofitted them to go from 25 to 60hz. Wild. I just learned that.

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