Road design, transportation and walkability

[plam]

Recreation is great, no one would argue with that. But it's limited. The question, though, is: can you live your life without a car? Walking and biking should be usable as primary means of transportation, not just as recreation.

Recreation is limited?  How?

  Walking and biking could be used as primary means as it pertains to the individual or their situation.  I just wouldn't want to take my son to hockey practice on a 7 am January morning on our bicycles.  Walking or biking down to the grocery store to pick up weekly groceries for a family of five is not something I really feel like doing.  But, I can and have biked down to the neighbourhood Zehrs to pick up a small individual item.  Guess I could cycle the 25 km to work but then I don't have shower facilities when I get there and again I would never consider it in winter.  I commend you for these two modes being able to be your primary means, just doesn't work for me. 
 Even those who are able to have those two modes as their primary means at some point still rely on someone who uses some sort of vehicle to deliver a product or service ( pizza guy, plumber, UPS, service tech etc. ).  Now that I think of it, when I was younger I did try to bring a pizza home on a bicycle.  It didn't look great when I got home but I still ate it.

As danbrotherson said, recreation is limited means that it's good to be able to use the bicycle as not just for recreation but also for living one's daily life. I do actually have a friend living in downtown Toronto who takes his kids to hockey practice on his cargo bike; it's probably as fast as a car would be. In other places (and when there's no pandemic) there's not the expectation of doing once-per-week groceries. Electric cargo bikes are probably going to become popular for urban deliveries also, and I think there are a lot of urban food-delivery workers that use bicycles. Plumbers probably need a truck.

Depending on where you live, some of these may not be feasible, such as small/remote communities without local stores. But, even then, you could work within walking distance, bicycle to some places and take a taxi once in a while. It's really a continuum.

Sure. Historically there would have been a general store in a village but I think times are tough for such establishments now. The question is around what sort of lifestyle we should build our urban design, where we want most people to live: places where they have to drive every day, or places where there are multiple viable options.

(These are not normal times and this is not my normal life, but I actually was not in a car from March 25 to April 29. It's definitely possible to do so where I'm living in Kelburn, a suburb of Wellington. In Waterloo I can also live my normal life without a car, although getting out of town without a car is slower or more complicated than I'm willing to do most of the time.)

However, in more dense areas they are trying to fill the role of both sidewalk and bike lane when those should probably be separate - navigating around pedestrians at bicycle speeds becomes a point of conflict soon enough. I think our planners are too quick to jump on them as a solution when a more thorough implementation would be safer.

Yep. Even 30 years ago the bike path and walking path along Notre Dame Est in Montreal was not multi-use. There is enough use that you want to keep these uses separated.