There are so many things…

This bill will will not save you time, nor will it reduce gridlock. Below are some major issues with the bill:

- It is extremely authoritarian. The Provincial government has no business dictating how every single municipality in the province should be building local infrastructure. Municipal governments are elected for that, not the province. For example, they will have power over whether Timiskaming will be able to install a bike lane on a residential street, which is extremely overreaching.

- It completely ignores the overwhelming amount of research (see a meta analysis of induced demand in the attached link) showing how bike lanes reduce congestion. Induced demand governs traffic patterns, so if there are more car lanes, more people will drive (not the amount that drove under less car lanes). In addition, the people who would've cycled will now use cars instead, further adding to car traffic congestion, and reducing the number of available travel options.

- The province was dishonest in saying 1% of people use bike lanes, quoting a study for the entire region. On Bloor, University, and Yonge in particular, there are large amounts of people that ride bikes, which is certainly far more than 1%.

- The province appears set on moving as many cars as possible instead of moving the most amount of PEOPLE as possible, opting for extremely inefficient modes of transport (cars) which take up far more space than bikes and transit. If they really want to reduce car congestion, they should build public transit which is far more space efficient than highways (line 1 moves more people than the 401 daily despite the 401 being 18 lanes wide at its widest point - but a few more lanes will surely solve it instead of building transit, right?).

- The city of Toronto already paid millions of dollars to install the bike lanes on Bloor, Yonge, and University, and even the province reimburses them, those are 100% wasted tax dollars on behalf of the city/province.

From spending $250M of tax payer dollars to expedite sales of alcohol in convenience stores, to bad ideas like the Bradford bypass which will cost billions to save people 10 minutes of travel time between the 400 and 404, which will clog up with traffic within a year or so due to induced demand, to withholding funding to the health sector, etc.

Most importantly with this bill, they ignore the fundamental concept that the only way to reduce car traffic, is viable alternatives to driving. This government is not representing the best interests of the people, and are wasting our money. As someone who voted for the conservatives in the most recent election, they have absolutely lost my vote. Along with my entire family.