I would like to provide my…

I would like to provide my thoughts on the proposal to strip away the bike lanes on Bay Street and other Toronto arterial roads and the proposed law to give the province the mandate to remove bike lanes in other municipalities and to require approval for new lanes that take away a lane for car traffic.
I believe that this intrusion by the province into traffic design at the local level is unwarranted. It would seem that a Toronto-centric view of the world is being foisted on the rest of the province. There has not been hue and cry raised in municipality after municipality against recent improvements to bicycle infrastructure. It would seem that Toronto challenges with car traffic volume is dictating policy across the province where conditions are very different. Indeed, one could not be blamed for feeling this legislation seems to treat traffic design as something that can be solved as easily as sending out a crew to fill a few potholes.
The GTA currently has three significant transit projects underway. All of them are massively behind schedule, with no implementation dates in sight. Likely all of them are significantly over budget, although public reporting is non-existent. All of them are managed by Metrolinx. Surely, resources and talent should be focused on fixing the province’s inability to deliver transit systems reliably, on time and on budget. Further, there are plans to finally electrify parts of the GO system. Getting this project underway and successfully delivered will be an enormous challenge for Metrolinx. These are truly provincial-level initiatives that should be the focus, not municipal road design.
To the issue of the Toronto bike lanes.
The implementation of these lanes was done through a robust process, involving all stakeholders and supported by in-depth research. Research that showed how streets with cycle paths supported the retail business on the street better than streets without cycle paths. Cars just drive by. Buses don’t stop at all the shops. Stores are invisible to subways. Removing the cycle lanes will have a negative effect on businesses in these corridors. All that research has been done. It is unclear why the government is so against the small businesses on, for example, Bloor Street.
The Bloor Steet cycle path is very well used. Obviously, more connectivity is required to increase its use even further. Already the cycle volume would equate to a very, very well used bus route, one of the busiest in the TTC network. However, removing the cycle path would not put all these people on the busses. Some would continue to cycle, at much greater risk of personal injury. Others would get into cars and create more grid lock. The car, the bicycle and walking share a key advantage over buses and subways – they get you right to your destination. This is a very valuable attribute.
How much time does the government think will be saved by car drivers should be bike lane be removed? I believe it would not be more than one minute per car per trip. Even one minute is unlikely to happen. What is the most likely outcome is that more cars will fill up the road and the gridlock will be as bad. But we will all be poorer for not having the option for a safe, effective, zero emission bike lane. And some cyclists will die. How much quicker does a car trip down Bloor Street have to be to be worth the injuries and deaths that are certain to occur?
We are just starting the adoption of electric bikes in Canada. Electric bikes will bring more people to commuting by bike. The increased ease, the increased speed and the lack of building up a big sweat makes e-biking very attractive. The province should, if anything, be preparing for a sharp increase in cycling in the coming years rather than short-shortsightedly removing what cycling infrastructure has been developed.
I understand that there is frustration with gridlock at certain times of the day. The problem is not too many bikes; rather it is too many cars. Gridlock is actually reduced when more of us cycle. Perhaps we should be looking at what other cities have done to reduce gridlock by reducing car traffic. Some samples I am familiar with:
1. Eliminate all free street parking, aside from residents. Victoria gave all students to the end of high school free bus passes, funded by eliminating free street parking and charging for parking 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
2. Congestion charges are used in London England to reduce car traffic in targeted areas. Toronto could place tolls on cars coming into the downtown on the major expressways. Implement a toll at the downtown off-ramps to encourage people to park outside the downtown and take transit.
3. On a trip to downtown Den Hague, Holland, we parked at a parking garage outside of the city core for 2 Euros for the day. Our parking ticket entitled 4 people to take transit into and out of the downtown. A frequent, quick light rail system took us to the downtown. Could Toronto do that? Could Metrolinx deliver the supporting transit?
4. At the baggage carousel in the Geneva airport there is a transit voucher dispenser. Just take a voucher and ride transit for free to your destination. On checking into your hotel, you are provided free transit passes for the duration of your trip, eliminating the need to rent a car.
5. On our trip to Tokyo, the largest metropolitan center in the world with about 80% of Canada’s entire population we noticed that there was no gridlock. Most of the city traffic was cabs, delivery vehicles and service/emergency vehicles. How do they do it? Excellent mass transit, tolled highways and restricted parking capacity.
6. In Holland, we cycle to and from Schiphol Airport. We cycled to and from the Vienna Airport. We cycled out of Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and to the Bordeau Airport. Unthinkable in Toronto. Why? Because the cycling network is only now starting to be developed. We need more cycling infrastructure and better options for the people currently stuck in their cars. Not less infrastructure and no alternative other than the car.
7. From Paris to Amsterdam to Montreal to Copenhagen to Ottawa, truly world class cities have incredible cycling infrastructure that is connected, wide-spread and safe. Again, Toronto is way, way behind. This proposal would put us even further behind.
8. The government has stated that cycling infrastructure does not belong on arterial roads and should be moved to secondary roads. In some cases that might work, and Toronto has been doing exactly that in many places. If the government believes this is a feasible solution for the bike lanes on Toronto’s arterial roads, then the provincial government should build the new, direct, connected and safe cycle paths on secondary roads before removing the existing infrastructure. Perhaps Metrolinx could be put in charge of building such a network.
9. From the west, we have a number of alternatives to go to and through Toronto. All the expressways are very, very busy. The 401 through Toronto is the busiest highway in the world. That is not a badge of honour. It’s a travesty and a disaster. Of course, there is one exception. The 407ETR that a Conservative government sold without guarantees on the rate of increase of tolls is dramatically underused. The 407ETR had revenues of $450.3M and net income of $187.3M in 2023. 41% of their revenue went to profits after tax. I don’t know of any other business that has more than 40% of their revenue on the bottom line. It’s obscene. Meanwhile, more traffic pours onto the 401, the 403 and the QEW/Gardiner than they can possibly handle, creating truly world class gridlock that is not caused by a few cycle lanes. It is time that this government take steps to fix the 407TR problem created by their predecessor. That’s a problem requiring the attention of the province, unlike municipal bike lanes.