Apt comparison. If anybody has any ways to get around YouTube ads on a Roku, I’d love to hear them lol. My pi hole can’t handle it since they come from the same domain as the video.
Traffic engineering isn’t a university program and we’re still using studies from the 50’s to dictate our traffic engineering. It’s civil engineers in NA who are forced to follow outdated policy which maximizes for car traffic flow, regardless of body count or overall flow of poeple across all transit options. Generally, city planners are all for public transit and walkable and bike able cities but have to battle with politicians appealing to suburbanites with cars.
I think the point here is that suburbs and cities have such dogshit public transit and bike infrastructure that people do everything by car. Nobody is telling those who live in rural areas to bike 30km to get groceries.
Also, trams/streetcars in Zurich have right of way and the red lights change for them. Which is completely logical considering how many more people you can fit in them than a few cards at a red light. The problems with public transit in North America are a function of our car infrastructure.